Taika Waititi, the New Zealand film-maker behind the “anti-hate” Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit, says the movie’s six Oscar nominations have vindicated the risks he took in making the controversial film.
“I never wanted to make something that was very easy, because for me, if it’s too easy, then what’s the point?” Waititi told Deadline. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, it’s divisive,’ but where I come from, ‘divisive’ is not a swearword. It’s a means to create discussion.”
Jojo Rabbit is a second world war-era film telling the story of a 10-year-old German boy named Jojo, a member of Hitler youth whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler himself, who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the family’s home.
It was nominated for the Academy Awards’ prestigious best picture category in Tuesday’s announcement, along with nods for best adapted screenplay, film editing, costume design and production design. Scarlett Johansson, who plays Jojo’s mother, received a best supporting actress nomination.
It is the most nominations for a New Zealand film-maker since Peter Jackson’s final Lord of the Rings film, which won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for in 2004.
In the film, Hitler, played by Waititi, is a comedic buffoon, a decision Waititi defended in an interview with the Guardian in December.
“Comedy has always, for thousands and thousands of years, been a way of connecting audiences and delivering more profound messages by disarming them and opening them up to receive those messages,” he said. “Comedy is a way more powerful tool than just straight drama, because with drama, people tend to switch off or feel a sense of guilt or leave feeling depressed … Often it doesn’t sit with them as much as a comedy does.”
The film, based on Christine Leunen’s book Caging Skies, won the people’s choice award at the Toronto international film festival in September – sometimes a predictor of Oscars success – but polarised critics.
Jojo Rabbit received one- and two-star reviews in the Guardian and three stars from the Observer, with reviewers calling it “intensely unfunny”, “smug” and “oddly indecisive”. Rolling Stone labelled the film “deeply affecting” and “near impossible to shake” in a three and a half-star review.
“I think it’s pretty loved, actually. There’s not many of those people taking offence,” Waititi told the Guardian in December. “I didn’t want to make a film that every single person loved and thought was a charming, whimsical tale about a boy that finds a girl in his attic.”
Waititi, the film-maker behind Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do in the Shadows, told the Wrap it was “an incredible honour” to be nominated.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me,” he said. “My films are never really part of the conversation so, yeah, for this film to get its nominations is massive.”
In 2005 Waititi received his first Oscar nomination for the short film Two Cars, One Night.
