JOJO RABBIT: Watch Taika Waititi and Stephen Merchant Amusingly Break Down the Gestapo Scene
If you haven’t seen JoJo Rabbit yet, you’ve got to go out and see it! This is such a wonderfully funny, emotional, and heartfelt film. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year.
Anyway, I’ve got a fantastic video for you to watch that features director Taika Waititi and actor Stephen Merchant coming together to break down a Gestapo house invasion scene. “They discuss the complications with melding comedic undertones and drama while trying to present the events of World War II in a new light.”
One of the things that Waititi points out that I found interesting was that this is a scene that is the kind of comedy that we might have seen in Monty Python sketch had they done it. That’s their style of comedy, and I’ve always enjoyed it, which is what makes this so funny.
At another point in the video, Merchant brings up the criticism that the film has been getting from people, and he defends Waititi’s use of comedy as a way to break down hateful institutions and also brings up the long history of movies that have mocked Hitler.
Waititi agreed with him, saying, “What irks me is that people think comedy is not an effective tool or it’s not something to be taken to be taken seriously as an art form. It’s one of the most powerful tools that we have to fight against oppression and bigotry and oppression.”
I couldn’t agree more. Go see Jojo Rabbit!