Review: BOMBSHELL

We begin on the surface as Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly takes us for a tour around the Fox News offices. It's a world-wise but client facing monologue, just enough public professionalism, just enough sassy cynicism to make it feel human. So far it feels like The Big Short, the sprawling media-savvy epic of the GFC from a few years back. But we're not in for that kind of movie, this one is far more along the road of nuanced powerplay where films like All the President's Men live. Changes in the balance of power happen slowly and subtly as a result of out of office meetings or overhead phone conversations, of legal meetings where little is said directly and private consultations which can lead to downfalls.

In 2016 a lawsuit was brought against Fox CEO for sexual harrassment by a number of female staff. Each one of the plaintiffs stood to lose their jobs at Fox and perhaps all of US broadcasting as a result. It's a kind of Me Too origins episode.

The capsule moment in this film happens when young and ambitious Kyla sneaks a face to face with the CEO and ends up twirling before him and raising her dress until he sees her underwear. This has been done by such tiny degrees that she has hardly had time to notice the situation skidding out of her control. The moment I'm thinking of is when starts to reveal her legs, feels compressed and awkward and lets out a small embarrassed laugh and does a kind of squirming dance move. She has no other way of coping. Roger the Hutt is just doing it all by remote from his office chair and she's almost leaving her body. After a cinematic caesura she returns to her desk ashen and numb.

That tiny gesture feels like the last call for protest before her path is cast and it is pointedly twice performative being Margot Robbie understanding Kyla to the point of embodiment. Seldom has an onscreen sexual violation carried such weight. The only one I can properly compare it to is the scene in Neil La Bute's In The Company of Men where Chad demands to see the balls of a lower-rung staffer. There's an intensely uncomfortable creepiness about both but the Kyla/Ailes' scene wins (if that's the word) for its extra commitment. It's the only time we'll have to see this in the film. Other instances are either told in shorthand without need to be explicit or given a different approach (there's a strong inner monologue vs spoken response scene that works to a different effect but deserves mention).

The story is told as a triple stream converging in the final act. It concentrates on Megyn Kelly's story as she is at the peak of her power but the parallel tales of Gretchen Carlson and Kyla Pospisil are given distinct arcs that tell of one anchorwoman being edged out of her career and the third only starting hers. The title Bombshell and poster art triptych of Theron, Kidman and Robbie takes a ride on the notion of the blonde bombshell but the bombshell is one of litigation and the charging anger that fuelled it. For once the teaser for a current film is actually a teasing thing, making use of the confusion of the title. Clever. No, really, genuinely clever.

Theron's Megyn Kelly is all American Patrician, controlling her voice and expression according to the proximity of mics and cameras, in poised control but with the wily alertness of a lawyer. Theron uses the lowest register she has and the effect is less of perfect diction than continuously packaged information. Kidman as Gretchen Carlson plays for controlled frustration, building a case methodically, biting her lip at setbacks and keeping it cool in front of her kids. It's an actively still performance, possibly the hardest one to pull off but she does. Margot Robbie is at least free of a true life point of comparison as her character is a composite. From her scene described above she moves and speaks with a gathering wisdom. As Roger Ailes John Lithgow is a mesa of entitlement brought to physical dependency by a life of others' service, not without a supportive acknowledgement or his own wisdom. His uncontrolled sexual hunger in the scene with Robbie tells us he still thinks he's about seventeen.

Bombshell works and works against expectations that it might be more of a flamboyantly cynical satire like something by Sidney Lumet or Robert Altman but that opening tour is there to establish the status quo, not to unseat it, that comes later. It does beg your patience to follow leads that might not thrill but will form a pattern of behaviour that will form a massive tapestry of privilege and abuse and how the response to it had to work. It's single sides of phone calls, glances, meetings with closed shutters and unwritten rules writ large upon the light. This might be the tale of food fights at the carnival end of the news spectrum but it describes the heart of the Murdoch Modor, lightless and throbbing under the natural-look surface, without which wars might have been clipped by diplomacy and presidential candidates might have been buried under stadiums that rang with mockery. So, it matters. It's also bloody effective.

Review: 1917

Lance Corporals Blake and Scofield are woken from their slumber in a field by a sergeant who orders them to the general's tent where they are given a written order to be delivered through an extremely hazardous route. If they get through they will save thousands of lives. They set off through the British trenches to the point where they have to leave the protection of their own troops and go cross country.

That's the plot of the film. Thin? Well, it's war torn France near the end of WWI and the journey is the thing. Also, there's a plot point that my refusal to reveal severely limits my giving further detail. With a run time of a single minute under two hours, what is there left to say?

The look and landscape of WWI has been so well served throughout the history of cinema that refreshing it for a contemporary drama might seem unlikely. What Sam Mendes has chosen to do here is to suggest wars beyond it and even, perhaps, before it. The uniforms and haircuts are all correct. The bi-planes that buzz through the air can be done with CG. There's even a British Mk 1 tank upturned in a trench. However, the prospect of survival, moment to moment, and any scene that digs into the noise and destruction of warfare might as well be Crimean or Roman. The approach is not so much to present The Great War but to suggest war itself.

This can be overreached. There are decisions made by characters that need post hoc reasoning by audience members rather than flow from the circumstances. The course of this film could at several points be mistaken for a feature length theme park ride and at several other points resembles a first person shooter game more than a tough cinematic epic. But there we venture into one of the swamps of contemporary cinema: is a film lessened by its resemblance, however briefly, to another form or might that just be an expansion into greater culture. As an example outside of this one, I detest the previous decade's trend in mainstream horror to present a series of evenly timed jump scares. When I came to understand that this had been arrived at to cater to a young audience as equally engaged with their phones (and the wider connection through them) as they were with the film blaring and jolting in front of them. To understand is not necessarily to forgive (I still hate those films) but becomes indispensable. So, when we drop from a shooty-tooty bombed out village to a white water rapid rush we have to remember not to be too flat in our response. That can be a good thing as it just means that a movie is a movie and that can and should mean anything.

It surprises me that the "single take" trope has been paraded out for this one in the publicity as the experience of it is efficient and correctly unremarkable. When this became a trend in the 00s and beyond (e.g. Irreversible) we were instructed to marvel at it. Well, it was a feat, even if it really was (with very very few exceptions) one of good camera choreography and expert editing. Here, it adds an immediacy and sense of alertness and readiness to shift gear on a two cent piece. It's done so seamlessly and is so appropriate that this egg who notices editing forgot about it as a feature.

So, why make a movie about a war from over a century ago? Because war is war and whether its fought with dirty bombs or sticks and stones we will probably never shake it. 1917 is careful to let us know that notions of heroism are best left for the officers and media and that one journey through a constant threat of annihilation is the same as a million others when you're going through it. Some might well find some of the final scenes played for an emotional singalong but they struck me as controlled anguish. (But, really, go and watch Paths of Glory, sit through the final scene and tell me you didn't well up ... just a bit.) The final image is one of exhaustion which, as history has it, always seems to be war's last word.

Review: LITTLE WOMEN

Jo, Meg, Amy, Beth are ready to take on the world with their talents and ambition and they would were it not for the fact that they are poor (if genteel) and live during the American Civil War: prospect grim but for astute marriages, a point made the centre of Jo's meeting with a publisher. This film is about girls making choices, squandering them, being robbed of them by life or having them made on their behalf. For them the world is corsetted, crinolined and parloured where a girl's talents might grant them points on a marriage resume but, as with all their politics, tastes, joys and anger, are to be kept in place as "parts" rather than pursued as careers. As the 19th century source novel by the highly motivated and political Louisa May Alcott observes this as an expectation it also allows voice to the ambition. After Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig could not have made a choice more apt for her next feature.

The novel is a classic of American literature and beloved enough to have generated film adaptations from the silent era to now. Most of these concentrate on the girls' pursuit of marriage and the closer we come to this one, more of the undercurrents emerge. Gerwig's approach is to push the latter to the foreground, keep the marital stakes important but leave the weight of them to the other attempts for further discovery. This allows her to enhance the episodic nature of the source by managing the timeline according theme or character rather than a linear reading more appropriate for literature than cinema. At first this can be puzzling but only lightly so and as soon as you get the hang of it you relax into it and enjoy the episodes. The sense of an overall arc builds and the shifting of the time zones is deft rather than just stylistic.

Casting is key, as always. Saoirse Ronan as Jo shines, bringing fire and intellect (and frequent visits from Dublin in her accent: but with an actor this fine I just don't care). Meryl Streep clearly relishes the role of the grand dame Aunt March, adding sharp character to her patrician haughtiness. Emma Watson (whose accent also falters intermittently) brings a subdued suffering to her role and a sense that her character's strength lies in maintenance of the fragility of the humbleness she grows into. Laura Dern as the girls' mother, is the grown up version of that, endlessly supportive but feels every blow in private. It is Florence Pugh as Amy who I wanted to see more of, though. Amy's story struck me as a tougher battle, accepting her limitations as an aspirant artist, living as second best to Jo but biting on the bitterness to claim herself. It might be the performance that suffers her character's fate in the long run but for me it was the one I constantly waited for when it wasn't on screen. After the similarly thankless turn in Midsommar this year this just shows her growing fast as an artist. With all that Timothee Chalamet might well be trampled into obscurity but the easy aristocratic charm that hides his own frustrations at the world's constraints.

Gerwig is careful to balance the look and feel of the setting without giving in to the period drama wash which is why her parlour scenes always have a touch of claustrophobia to them. The shot of debutantes climbing the stairs with their hooped skirts creating a kind of traffic jam is funny, beautiful and mindful of the culture that demands it. The relief of the outdoors is palpable and a scene on a cold beach with Jo comforting the ailing Beth with the sand lifting in the wind in silvery wisps could have come from a Tarkovsky movie. This is a bitchy thing to say but in two features Gerwig has completely outclassed the entire output of her life and oft times creative partner Noah Baumbach. If he had done this it would have been hipsters in crinolines. Gerwig just makes it work.

My Teens: 2010 - 2019 in Cinema

Some Thoughts:

'Nother decade, huh? I'll have to confess that the last one changed without my really noticing. I was reminded earlier this year that I'd started the film night that created this blog ten years ago. As 2009 ended I'd spent the best part of  a year programming screening sequences by the half season, writing up the selections and even editing trailers for them. I'd turn up every Friday evening, shamble up Smith St and into Milos' place, checking the projector and av receiver, run a little of the feature and support and then wait with a coffee and noodle at the piano until people turned up, if they did. Things were different then but they were already changing.

The arthouses, whose demise had happened in the mid-00s, had not come back and there were only a few of us trying to address the gap in the inner city. We didn't yet have streaming video and the few US cable shows that were easily available on free to air tv were being shunted to difficult timeslots that meant we saw them as recordings rather than at the same time. Blu-ray was available but wasn't going to take DVD over as it meant getting a new machine and possibly replacing a whole collection. I was still sourcing the selections through a lot of international online retailers and even other means.

Few remain now and all power to them but cinema ain't what it used to be as far as how you get in front of it goes. Plenty of style changes, too, but that distribution disruption has done the most, and it's not all damage. Social media expanded with the continued monetisation of arenas like YouTube. Wince all we like, it has meant more content available of new voices with instant access and the resurfacing of obscurities worth our attention. This is almost the same as the local introduction of video on demand streaming which has brought the same kind of thing as YouTube but at a guaranteed audiovisual quality and often surprising creative tone. The adoption of it by rising names in cinema as well as old stagers like Scorsese will keep this going.

That has meant, though, that free to air tv which long abandoned movie marathons and strong new programming is all but unwatchable and on the death spiral. We're still waiting for Shudder (and Ozflix only works with Chromecast) but Disney, Amazon Prime and other interests have either moved in or are soon to. Too much choice? Probably, considering that none of these is free outside of the tv channels demand viewing resources and oddities like TubiTV.

Arthouse cinemas starved to death in the 2000s and much of their content went into streaming but this still means that there is a potential ocean of it that is even harder to discover without going off the map, now. Parasite has proved a stayer at Melbourne cinema Nova and maybe, just maybe, something like a swell of interest in filmmakers like Takeshi Miike or Hong Sang-Soo could be organised. Then again, Hoyts in Melbourne at least is screening good presentations of Chinese and Indian films in response to the local market so who knows?

And there are new names to watch. Ari Aster for his own brand of strong psycho drama that can spin off into outright horror or remain within the realm of fable while still appearing to be naturalistic (after a fashion). Jordan Peele brings his comedy scholarship to social commentary in movies that inform but forget not to entertain. Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead are building a kind of shadow Lovecraftian universe quietly in Mumblecore Corner and it's taking. Jennifer Kent stunned us with The Babadook and proved there was more in there with The Nightingale.

An unannounced wave of magical realism from south of the US border began making itself felt in the festival circuit with titles like the extraordinary and devastating Tigers are Not Afraid. A wave of meanspirited horror remakes dragged the genre down to the gutter, missing the point of the originals and going for big reveals. The Conjurverse gave us the jumpscare fests and bled into nearby galaxies to create likeminded rubbish like Sinister or the 2012 version of The Woman in Black. I hated every one of these violations but had to admit that their success led to funding for more genre output. I had no interest in the Marvel Comic Universe but also had to admit its clout and shook my head when Scorsese and Coppola both declared the films uncinematic. Of those old masters I had to admit I preferred the Scorsese exhibition to any of his output in the decade, being unable to muster interest in seeing a story about Christian missionaries in medieval Japan.

I enjoyed the transition of found footage as an aesthetic to a broader lo-fi field with some intriguing results like Yellow Brick Road, Banshee Chapter, the Creep movies, Unfriended, until productions like the surprisingly sombre and effective Satanic managed to make a fair tilt at mainstream clean light with some genuine original horror. The unsung hero of low-means film production was the drone, allowing for aerial shots on a budget. Elsewhere, the creation of online folkore through Reddits and video platforms bore intriguing fruit with creepypastas and the like which had a shivery homemade authenticity. On the outer verges, yes, but this, too, is cinema at least by intention.

Strangely, we also saw the revival of stable film production like Val Lewton in the '40s or Roger Corman in the '60s. A24 gave us a number of intriguing pieces that used genre as a tone or colour but provided solid social commentary like MidSommar, It Comes at Night or A Quiet Place. This gave rise for the silly description of elevated horror but that didn't harm the films themselves. Blumhouse seemed to take a throw it out there and see if it works approach resulting in a mixed bag that was interesting rather than tiresome.

Before my final ten, here's a grab bag of wondermints from the era just going:
Satanic, Sorry to Bother You, Tigers Are Not Afraid, Evolution, The Artist, Tabu, Climax, anything by Hong Sang Soo, The Invitation, The Reef, Banshee Chapter, Beasts of the Southern Wild, End of Animal, Spring Breakers, Why Don't You Play in Hell, The Sound of My Voice, Planet of Snail, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Snowtown, Amy, Son of Saul, Fear Itself, Kedi, Hereditary, The Nightingale, What We Do in the Shadows, Wounds, Unfriended, Under the Skin, Snowpiercer, Blue Valentine, In Fabric, A quiet Place, The Shape of Water, Thoroughbreds, Tragedy Girls, Tully, Lucky, Excision, The Hole in the Ground, Borderlands, A Gentle Creature, Mother!, A Ghost Story, Hard to be a God, Moonlight, Raw, Ingrid Goes West, It Comes at Night, Ich Sehe Ich Sehe, The Unknown Girl, I, Daniel Blake, The Forbidden Room, Birdman, Ex Machina, The Lobster, Wadjda, Predestination, Nightcrawler, The Bling Ring, Rhino Season, Martha Macy May Marlene, Chronicle, The Master, Uncle Boonmee who Can Remember His Past Lives, The Woman, Killing Ground.

And all this is still just surface scratching. I probably went to the cinema more regularly in the last ten years than any other decade and that was supplemented by streaming services. We're doing ok. I declare the 2010's to be a great decade of cinema.

The following, one from each year, are not necessarily what I might consider the best but all of them have stayed with me. I won't include lowlights except to say that Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson and James Wan and cronies should stop making films.

2010

Black Swan - Darren Aranofsky makes a muscular paranoia fantasy out of ballet. Can't want more than that. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis? Ok, maybe that much more.








2011

The Turin Horse - Bela Tarr bows out of cinema with an apocalyptic piece so patient and intense it's difficult to return to but so impressive that it never leaves your mind anyway.







2012

Berberian Sound Studio - The first Peter Strickland film I saw and it made me what I believe will be a lifelong fan. Start in an imagined genre world and then mix it up with razors on your fingers. Beautiful. Powerful.





2013

Blancanieves - Who says silent cinema can't engage? This extraordinary late entry doesn't just engage, it enchants.









2014

The Babadook - A marvellous if brutal exploration of grief, exhaustion and guilt and the monsters they create.








2015

It Follows - Not as claimed at the time a regression to the teenage sex=death equation, this retro-toned horror brought us a far scarier protean threat borne of responsibility.







2016

Under the Shadow - A kind of porting of Dark Water to an even more oppressive cultural situation as a mother and daughter struggle in the theocratic dictatorship of the Ayatolla's Iran. Inside is danger but outside is hatred.






2017

Get Out - social satire woven deep into science-horror from the mind that successfully rebooted the Twilight Zone. He did it again this year with US. He will do it again. I will be in the queue.










2018

The Favourite - From Greek Weirdcore to the edge of the mainstream, Yorgos Lanthimos has beat a steady path. With this tale of ambition and shifting empathy he shows us why all that struggle was worth it.









2019

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Sublime, deep and heavily affecting, this tale of love on a clock and the importance of moments could not be a better means to round off ten years of great cinematic change.









That's it. Time for a nap. See youse next decade,

PJ

HiMidLo 2019

A rich year at the dark house where even the middling and low points had something to offer (well most of them). MIFF was fun (if its overengineered series of daytime solo screenings bordered on misanthropy) but the best, pleasantly, were from the normal schedules. The last time a year at the cinema was so rich was twenty years ago.

The High

The Nightingale - for having the courage to introduce difficult themes and then to follow through with complicated responses. Far more than a revenge movie.





Portrait of a Lady on Fire - a love story that yet manages to comment on the process of portraiture, make poignant use of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and so strongly insist on the importance of moments that its final shot is of a face changing by the second as it relives each one.

Parasite - Sociopolitical fable of wise down and outers gaming the system with a mix of comedy and dark drama that only the likes of Bong Joon-Ho can provide.

Midsommar - a break-up story set in an allegorical explosion that involves paganism, dance, ritual, extraordinary violence and wondrous hallucination to achieve its final, hard-won smile.





In Fabric - Peter Strickland takes swatches from everything he has encountered and quilts them together in a tighter knit than all the post-modern popsters of the '90s put together. Adding warmth to technique he presents something very funny and often genuinely eerie.

Border - so intense that this is a once only view (currently viewable on SBS on Demand, at the mo) this powerful piece about identity and self-acceptance is like nothing else you have seen this year (and chuck in next year and any other bloody year)

US - Get Out was not a fluke. It was a well-crafted first step into cinema by an accomplished comedian and storyteller. Jordan Peele's reboot of The Twilight Zone had its issues but US avoids them in a show of profound WOW.




Pain & Glory - I prefer Almodovar when he is self-reflexive to his giddy sex comedies. Does that sound obvious? Well, it shouldn't: the latter formed a solid bridge from the lightless oppression of the Franco years and work perfectly well as funny movies. But every time he gets more seriously autobiographical he seems to hone his skills' blade.

Something Else - mumblecore breakup story complicated by what might be a monster of imagination or something far more real. Same universe as that of the rising talents Benson and Morehead



Mrs Lowry & Son - Tim Spall and Vanessa Redgrave shine in a tale of a complex mother and son bond that compresses yet allows for strong personal vision.

The Swallows of Kabul - like a folktale but in the reality of Taliban Afghanistan lifted by entrancing animation and a breezy pace and no shyness from showing atrocity

Jojo Rabbit - improves massively in retrospect as the whole picture has formed and the expectations of the misleading trailer are dispelled. Wonderful fable of ethics from Taika Waititi






Middle

The Day Shall Come - Chris Morris comes through with more subtlety than his last feature (Four Lions) and the ending kills but maybe too much meandering in the second act.

Ready or Not - unsubtle and mostly two dimensional, this us vs them black comedy is lifted into glory by its dizzying central performance.






Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood - too long but continuously enjoyable.







Stan and Ollie - Dug deeper than the average biopic but retained a little too much of what bothers me about them.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - instead of "is that all there is?" after all this time we might rather say "well, that works fine". So it does. As well as Brazil or Fear and Loathing did.




The Long Shot - potentially subversive rom com never quite breaks out of pleasant

The Realm - fine political thriller of manners from Spain takes us effectively from sympathy to a fascinated antipathy as a bad guy is shunned and then threatened by worse guys but needed trimming

Rocketman - music biopic makes one good decision to be a musical first and biography second so that the famous songs match the life lesson rather than the timeline. Some thrilling setpieces but eventually falls into serving the timeline rather than the idea

The Keeper - efficient tale of a struggle for acceptance in the face of mass hostility could have afforded to be a lot harder than it was.

Animals - joys and infuriations of friendship well served by good casting and writing but felt overlong







Low

Knives Out - decent whodunnit promises extras that it doesn't quite deliver






Judy & Punch - great idea shoots itself in the foot at the end of the first act and never quite recovers

Joker - like an efficient cover version of '70s Scorsese with a startling lead vocal








Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach almost breaks through the quirk barrier with some well-nurtured performances from Scarlett Johanson and Adam Driver and doesn't return to the atrocity levels of Frances Ha but it almost feels like this screen divorce is happening in real time. Not for me.



Palm Beach - constantly embarrassing reunion tale of privileged Australians misses every single mark





Brightburn - a dark anti superman tale with surprising gore doesn't exceed its routine approach








The Lodge - horror by numbers constantly annoys with obvious revelations and unremarkable twists. Couldn't care less.

Review: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

A young art teacher is holding a life class for her students with herself as the model. She spies a painting in the back of the room which one of the students has brought out of storage. It's one of hers, a eeries picture of a woman on a beach at night with the hem of her dress in flames. It shares its title with the film itself.

So far we have the opening of a gothic tale and indeed as we ride the waves with her younger self to the island estate of an aristocratic family to paint the portrait of the daughter and heiress we feel that very vibe which persists throughout the next couple of hours on screen. But this is not a horror tale despite the dark and mysterious mansion and recent family tragedy which is variously reported as an accident or suicide.

And that's not all. The daughter, Heloise, has a rich suitor she has never met. Portraitist Marianne is there to seal the deal with the picture that will raise the interest of the man from Milan. All well. No. Heloise has been educated and virtually brought up in a convent, typical enough for girls of her standing, and doesn't want to get married. Of convent life she says she liked the equality. So she won't pose for the portrait. Marianne must do her own posing as a hired companion for Heloise and sneak in any sketching she can to finish the nuptial advert.

Their early encounters are charged as Marianne's gaze goes steadily from that of an artist learning the contours of her subject's face and body to that of a lover as their dialogues deepen into the importance of the pieces of life. I use the term gaze advisedly. A heteronormative painter/subject story would crank into male gaze gear without thinking and within a very few scenes but we're concerned with something more than the skin deep in this ocean deep tale. We are concerned with time. Heloise resists her marriage but knows it or something like it is inevitable. Marianne as a female painter has limited prospects in the greater world back in Paris. Oh, didn't I say? This story is set in pre-revolutionary France, L'ancien Regime, the 18th century. When their attraction heats to love their physical relationship is on a clock. The better Marianne does her job the sooner she will lose Heloise and that will be forever.

This extraordinary film of art and its capacity for memory, of music and its power (in a film without a non-diegetic score) and of great intimacy is above all about the moment. The delay in revealing Heloise's beauty is long and continues in a tease right to the last as the camera follows behind her as she rushes to the beach. The flame at the hem of the skirt once seen is left to burn beneath a dangerous smile. A pair of profiles plays as an avoidance game as Marianne in the foreground studies her subject's profile until Heloise turns in accusation, sending the artist's gaze spinning away.

Finally, we have a face. In the candlelit auditorium she sits and at last hears the music promised her by her lover. It is Vivaldi's "summer storm" allegro from the Four Seasons and at first she is overwhelmed by its power. This soon bring torrents of those moments back and stretches the face into rueful pain. At last, the beauty of them allows her a warm smile. That's in one long take. It's intimacy, it's a moment of many moments, it is music and portraiture and, above all, it is cinema and among the finest of the year.

Review: JOJO RABBIT

Jojo, 10, is dressing up for his first day at boot camp. As he is going through a self-administered pep talk the spectre of his imaginary friend passes between himself and the mirror and then behind, describing a circle of influence. His imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. Boot camp is at the Hitler Youth.

He is ridiculed at training (an incident that gives him the nickname of the title) and his attempted comeback results in injury and permanent scarring. His supportive mother has a few things to say about that and he is reinstated at the training facility as a kind of intern, outspoken as a good, freshfaced Nazi. But there are complications and those I'll leave for your screening.

Taika Waititi plays a delicate game here. On the one hand he must steer short of empathising Nazi characters (he appears himself as the imaginary Hitler) and on the other must avoid too heavy a hand in allowing the deliverance from that mindset back into humaneness. 

Cleverly, his Hitler can be both boisterously supportive of Jojo when in need but monstrously childish in moments of stress, but then bumblingly ineffectual when faced with difficult issues. He is, after all, the invention of a child seeking a hero and with a child's limitations he is a consistent source of comedy as well as emotional violence. It's a strong turn by Waititi let down only by his more cutomary deadpan moments. Then again, this is a delicate balance.

Most of the story is given to us through the vision of Jojo himself and, while it could easily have been a kind of slapstick version of The Tin Drum, the film pulls well back from a more adult horror (remembering that Oscar was an adult in a boy's body). But this is still Nazi Germany so while the Hitler Youth training (with a hilariously off-hand Sam Rockwell in charge) is mostly goofy there are public hangings. A lot of the middle made obvious by this is filled with Scarlett Johanson as Jojo's mother who brings a strained brightness and whimsy to her son's life with good humour laced with graver life lessons. While her superb performance in the otherwise plodding Marriage Story will eclipse this one her commitment to this character takes us with her.

Roman Griffin Davies is luminous in the title role, constantly puzzled by a world ruled by easy answers to difficult problems from one corner and complications from every other. He is, refreshingly, a kid, not a wisecracking adult in leder shorts. The dialogue is deliberately modern for a comic frisson with its setting but even then his delivery of it feels natural. That's important as, however closely this piece sparks against magical realism it would implode if it banged its way in there. The other major relationship that must work is with Elsa (a wickedly arch but deep performance from Thomasin McKenzie) and it is there where the magic meets the real gets a lot tougher to carve.

This will sound facetious but isn't: the main lesson of this film for cinema goers is in the trailer which not only reveals too much but also steers prospective audiences to expect something that it isn't. It is not, not, not the Third Reich in Wellington, nor Mel Brooks does The Tin Drum. Don't expect a big laugh every few minutes. Jojo Rabbit holds a lot of comedy but it is steadfastly a fable about ethics, the kind of ethics that can bring their bearers to face death for their sake. The final moments that show the reward for this are highly manipulative but also life affirming and beautiful. See if you don't have something in your eye when the song starts.