At the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, "Joker", "Parasite", "Marriage Story" and other annual hits have ushered in their own highlight moments.
Surprisingly, a children's anti-war film "Jojo's Whimsical World", which was not favored by critics and audiences, finally stood out from the best films and successfully won the award for best adapted screenplay.
The film's director, Taeja Viditti, the supporting actress Scarlett Johansson, and the cute little boy Jojo in the film, Played by Romain Griffin Davis, have also become the focus of heated discussion with the film's success in winning the Oscar.
It is difficult to deny that as a simple anti-war theme and children's theme film, the outstanding performance of the actors is an important factor in the oscar of "Jojo's Whimsical World".
But in addition, the film's innovations and breakthroughs in lens language, picture scheduling and the construction of the character's inner world are more worthy of the audience's careful taste and praise.
Some critics once said that a good war movie is often also an anti-war movie.
Why?
If you think carefully about the war movies you have seen in the past that strive to portray cruel and real wars, such as "Soldiers In the City", "Save Private Ryan", "Pearl Harbor", etc., the first impression of many viewers is naturally shocked, but what follows is definitely not the impulse to try to return to the war years, but the vision of maintaining peace.
Audiences who see the brutal and real side of war will never want to fight another cruel war.
However, after all, the smoke of World War II has long since dissipated, those painful memories have gradually become a dusty history, and the increasingly conservative Hollywood is no longer as keen on war movies as at the end of the last century.
The insinuations of Nazism and conservative forces in today's films may even attract a large number of opponents and protesters.
As a world superpower, the United States, which flaunts its might everywhere, has long been accustomed to using force to solve problems and is accustomed to the momentum of solipsism.
If you compare the actions of American politicians today, you will find that the freedoms defended by countless soldiers in the bloody battle of World War II have become a big joke.
Looking across the ocean, in Europe, one of the main battlefields of World War II, neo-Nazism and conservatism also have unprecedented popular support today in the face of declining economies and setbacks in the process of European integration.
Under the misdirection of self-interested politicians, populist and conservative ideas have gradually replaced rational tolerance, Sino-US contradictions, US-Russia disputes, the situation in the Middle East... World peace, which had lasted for many years, began to become precarious.
If a country is dominated by populism and does not care about the world for its own interests, the likelihood of war is greatly increased. The last time this happened was in Germany, and it ended up paying a terrible price for its own tyranny.
In such an era background, "Jojo's Whimsical World" can really be described as untimely, in an era full of prejudice and short-sightedness, still persistently singing the song of peaceful, inclusive and brave youth from a childlike innocent perspective.
From the perspective of a ten-year-old German boy Jojo, the film first uses a very ironic comedy to depict how this child, who is poisoned by Nazi ideas, works hard to realize the dream of becoming a perfect fascist.
But as the story progresses, thanks to his mother's teachings and the real experiences of the Attic Jewish girl, Jojo, who is immersed in the worship of the Fuehrer, gradually begins to doubt his long-held worldview.
And finally after the unexpected death of the Gestapo searcher and his mother, he changed from an unswerving "little Nazi" to a little boy who embraced the light and loved freedom.
Comparing reality, what the film wants to do is not just to relive history.
Blind worship, irrationality, prejudice and ignorance of the world... The ordinary German people in the film, who are extremely distorted in their inner world under the poison of Nazi ideology, are like the American people who still hold their heads high today.
When will the voices of freedom, democracy, and reason replace populism and conservatism, which are full of prejudice and short-sightedness, and become the mainstream ideological values of this country?
Compared with the satirical comedies with distinct anti-war implications such as "The Great Dictator", "Shameless Bastard" and "Beautiful Life", "Jojo's Whimsical World" is undoubtedly something different and special.
Its focus is not on revealing nazi war crimes in a cliché, but on the contrast between the fantasy world and the harsh reality through the perspective of the little boy Jojo, and thus unfolds the theme of war, peace and youth in the film, so that the audience follows the footsteps of Jojo's growth and falls into contemplation step by step.
The most amazing setting of the film is that Jojo does not stand on the opposite side at the beginning of the film——— he is a crazy fascist admirer.
Based on this setting, Jojo's fantasy world is also not full of blue skies and white clouds, full of birds and flowers, as ordinary people imagine, but full of Nazi ideas and the figure of Führer Hitler.
Of course, Jojo's Nazi Germany was not the culprit of the world war but the savior of the world and mankind, and Hitler was not the image of the heinous and hysterical war criminal we know.
The madness, childishness, and ignorance that Jojo shows at the beginning of the film are at odds with everything that the audience knows, such as the Aryan race, the Jews as monsters with horns on their heads, and the Fuehrer as an omnipotent God... However, it is these plots that allow the viewer to reflect on World War II from an unprecedented perspective, to get a closer look at Germany under Nazi rule.
The spread of extreme populism has left ordinary people, even children who are illiterate, on their own. Audiences who know the true history and the ending of the story will open up the perspective of God in this movie, and will be sad for Jojo's strange logic at the beginning of the movie, and will also applaud his growth.
Director Taiga Viditti is a filmmaker with a personal style, which we have already experienced in "Thor 3".
The original Thor myth story with classical heroism has been transformed into a crazy and lively superhero movie under the whimsy of Taiga.
In a film with a heavy theme, "Jojo's Whimsical World", Tai adds the same innovation and courage to give the film a different color and brilliance, so that the smoke of war is all hidden behind the joy of children.
Jojo's fantasy world is colorful, and the movie pictures that unfold in front of the audience are also full of sunshine and brilliance. Under the protection of his mother and well-meaning instructors, Jojo grew up in a social environment of extreme superstition and madness, ostensibly an extremely fanatical Nazi, but as the Jewish girl Elsa said: "You are not a Nazi, you are just a ten-year-old boy who loves to wear funny uniforms and wants to be a member of the club."
Deep down, Jojo is always a simple and cute boy, even if he is ten years old, he still needs his mother to help him tie his shoelaces, he is still lonely, and he needs the company of his fantasy good friend Hitler.
The entire first half of the film is filled with bright tones, beautifully decorated homes, beautiful mothers in fashionable clothes, and Nazi Scout costumes, and Jojo's Whimsical World uses color as much as the hit "The Grand Budapest Hotel" a few years ago.
These bright colors symbolize the well-preserved childlike heart of a little boy who has always been sheltered in the war, but the Gestapo search for his family and the tragic death of his mother have made this little boy who was once ignorant of the world and always believed in fascism begin his own growth step by step.
With the death of his mother, the world of the little boy Jojo gradually becomes deeper, full of dim tones, which is not the color of despair, but the background of growth.
He finally learned to tie his own shoelaces, and finally under the company and teaching of the Jewish girl Elsa, he realized how childish and ridiculous his obsession was, but at this time he still did not fully recover his childlike innocence.
It wasn't until the Allies counterattacked the town, accidentally witnessed the helplessness of the nazi brainwashed into cannon fodder in the war, saw the Nazi officer who had sheltered him in the moment of the war dancing in a bright and funny uniform, and saw that the madness he knew was not powerless in the cruel war, Jojo finally realized that he was not a so-called Nazi fanatic, he was just an ordinary little boy.
And that fantasy friend Hitler is just a projection of the boy's obsession when he is alone.
Mom once told Jojo that when you feel like you like someone from the bottom of your heart, you feel butterflies flying in your stomach.
Elsa's unexpected appearance makes the boy feel the butterfly fluttering for the first time and experience the beauty of love.
It can be said that it is this emotion that makes Jojo let go of prejudice and hatred for the first time, and with childlike innocence and tenderness, enter the world of a girl, understand that the Jews are not monsters with horns on their heads, and see the true face of war.
The butterfly is a symbol of Jojo's innocent recovery, and an important image that connects his mother and Elsa, but at the same time with the cruelty of growing up, when Jojo finally took off his Nazi military uniform and chased the beautiful butterfly on the street like a child for the first time, the heartbreaking flower shoes unexpectedly appeared in front of him.........