Formula Still Works: Jojo Rabbit is an Average Film That Would Never Get 6 Oscar Noms if it Wasn't About the Holocaust
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NAZI COMEDY JOJO RABBIT SNAGS SIX ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS USING HOLLYWOOD’S TRIED AND TRUE FORMULA
Long after it’s become a cliché of its own, exploiting the Holocaust for easy nominations is still a thing – and Jojo Rabbit is prime evidence.
Jojo Rabbit, directed by Taika Waititi, is a comedy-drama about Jojo, a young German boy in the Hitler Youth whose imaginary friend is a whimsical Adolph Hitler. Jojo, the titular character, comes to question his Nazi beliefs when he discovers a secret his beloved mother is hiding.
Jojo Rabbit is a mild misfire of a movie that never quite threads the delicate needle of comedy and drama that its bold premise requires. It isn’t an awful movie, but it isn’t a great one either, as is reflected in its 80% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and the fact that it has only brought in $32 million at the box office.
With the film’s subdued critical and financial results you would think it had no chance for Oscar nominations…you’d be wrong. Jojo Rabbit has reeled in six Oscar nominations including Best Picture. So how did the mediocre Jojo Rabbit become such Oscar bait? Easy…it used the super cynical Oscar formula.
The super cynical Oscar formula goes like this…if you want to guarantee an Oscar nomination then your movie must be about one of four broad topics…here they are in hierarchical order…
1. Holocaust/Nazis
2. Slavery/Civil Rights/Race
3. AIDS epidemic/LGBTQ themes
4. Hollywood
Since 2009 when the Best Picture category expanded from 5 nominees up to 10, only once has the Best Picture category been devoid of at least one film that hits upon these subjects. Some notable beneficiaries of the formula over the last decade are such mediocrities as BlacKkKlansman(2018), Call Me By Your Name(2017), Hidden Figures(2016), Selma(2014), Dallas Buyers Club(2013), The Help(2011), The Kids Are Alright(2010), as well as Best Picture winners Green Book(2018), Moonlight(2016) and The Artist(2011).
Even the best directors in the business have used the super cynical Oscar formula to advance their career. Steven Spielberg spent two decades making blockbusters that got him no Oscar love, but after a failed attempt to use the formula for Oscar gold on The Color Purple (1985), he finally took home the Best Director and Best Picture prize with Schindler’s List (1993).
Quentin Tarantino’s last four films, Inglourious Basterds(2009), Django Unchained(2012), The Hateful Eight(2015) and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood(2019), have all utilized the formula, and three of them got Best Picture nominations for their efforts. Tarantino has yet to win the coveted Best Director or Best Picture Oscar, but maybe he’ll be victorious this year with his homage to Hollywood.
The question is…why does the super cynical Oscar formula work?
Well, in terms of Holocaust/Nazi and Slavery/Race movies, the answer is simple. The Manichean nature of the narrative is easy to understand…there are good guys and there are very bad guys…it is all very black and white, pardon the pun.
Another reason these subjects are cinematically employed is because the Holocaust and slavery are monuments to human depravity and suffering, and as uncomfortable as it is to admit, those two subjects are chock full of dramatic potential. The same is true of the AIDS epidemic, which was its own kind of Holocaust. The bottom line is that whatever subject has death as a constant and foreboding presence in it is going to be loaded with drama…and hence has the potential to be a good film.
They give the most hackneyed story structures a historical weightiness, elevating them into what votes believe to be classy award-winning pictures.
But the suspicion is that it’s even simpler than that.
The two cities at the heart of the film industry, Los Angeles and New York, are the cities with the largest Jewish and gay populations in the U.S., which most likely translates into a solid number of Academy members being Jewish, gay, or both.
Holocaust, slavery and gay-themed films are profound for most every audience due to their highlighting of humanity and inhumanity, but they most definitely resonate in the Jewish and gay communities, as those groups know the sting of persecution all too well.
The appeal of Hollywood themed movies at the Oscars is not quite so existentially based…simply put, Hollywood is the global center of narcissism and that results in the film industry liking stories about itself.
As for Jojo Rabbit, writer/director Taika Waititi is a very talented guy as proven by his direction of the very best Marvel movie, Thor: Ragnorak.
Waititi isn’t just a promising writer/director, he is also a gifted comedic actor, and in Jojo Rabbit he takes on the biggest challenge of all, playing Adolph Hitler as a charmingly lovable sidekick to Jojo.
While I think it was more artistic ambition than Oscar ambition that led Waititi to make a Holocaust/Nazi comedy, there is a Holocaust/Nazi comedy roadmap that leads to Oscar success. In 1999 Roberto Benigni wrote, directed and coincidentally enough, starred in, Life is Beautiful, the Italian language Holocaust movie that took home Oscars for Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film.
If Jojo Rabbit was a noble attempt to make a profound and insightful film, it failed. If it was a cynical ploy to snag Academy Award nominations, it succeeded six times over, proving once again that the Oscar formula may be super cynical, but it is also highly effective.
Let’s hope once Taika Waititi has walked the Dolby Theater red carpet once, he deploys his solidified A-lister cachet to make the kind of personal and soulful movies that brought him to worldwide attention in the first place.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
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