Author: Little Grandpa
With no flesh-and-blood battlefields or gun-fired positions, Jojo's Whimsical World is a child's perspective on such a brutal and brutal war.
The story is set in Germany at the end of World War II, where the Allies have completed the encirclement of the German homeland and are about to invade Berlin. Hitler, who was at the end of the crossbow, did not give up, still implemented a high-pressure policy at home, and recruited in the form of youth regiments. Although the protagonist Jojo does not meet the criteria for enlistment in the army in terms of age, he is already a member of the youth league, and he is accompanied by not only his instructor and mother, but also a ghost living in his head - Hitler. Whenever something needs to be judged and resolved, this ghost will appear, answering his questions and providing a guide to action.
As a satirical comedy, Hitler in the film is not a serious and old-fashioned character, in contrast, the image of Hitler in Jojo's mind is quite humorous and approachable, so Jojo regards him as a mentor to growing up, or rather, a mentor to all members of the Youth League.
Children always listen to fairy tales, but adults can read through lies, Jojo's mother knows what kind of leader Hitler is, but she can't take risks, she, like all mothers, wants her children to be safe, and she doesn't want her children to become a fighter for lies. But under totalitarian rule, she, like most people, has no right to choose.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > there is no need for innocence here, because they don't</h1>
Jojo is a child, but also a warrior in training. Every day, he had to face not the teacher who taught mathematical knowledge, but the instructor who popularized the knowledge of war, and the people who attended the class with him were not classmates carrying books, but comrades with weapons. For them, the battlefield is not the words in the books, nor the pictures of science and education movies, but the looming future.
There doesn't have to be innocence here, because they don't need to. Jojo's Whimsical World focuses not on adults fighting in a hail of bullets, but on a group of armed children who are the future of the country and deserve the care of their parents and teachers, who need a quiet and comfortable desk rather than a heavily armed position. But because of the ambitions of a certain person and a certain group of people, from the moment they are born, they are doomed to be pushed to the gambling table supported by flesh and blood.
Under the camera, the childish hands are not holding the pen shaft, but a sharp knife that kills people, and their faces are covered with ignorant laughter and fearless roars. Their innocence is erased in a collective persecution, and they do not need fear and weakness, let alone the goodness that comes from the heart, which will only be spurned and ridiculed.
Jojo is one of the fanatics, but not thoroughly enough, because he still has doubts, and doubts stem from thinking. For the ghost of dictatorship, thinking is a loophole that needs to be plugged urgently, which will only make a warrior hesitate and hesitate, while for innocence, it is a fire to escape persecution, it will ignite the fear of individual life, the fear of death, and most importantly, it can restore humanity and goodness. What could be more important than kindness for a growing child?
Faced with threats from others, Jojo let go of an innocent rabbit, a kindness he did not want to lose. And those dictators who are on the sand table, they hold not only the fate of the country, but also the lives of many people, what do they not want to lose? Jojo didn't know, and neither would the warriors who fell on the battlefield. Only the history that has passed through the pool of blood has left room for judgment.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > torn families and broken lives</h1>
Jojo is a growing warrior, but he grows up with a more important character, and that's his mother.
In the classroom, Jojo was taught a falsified historical site to stir up emotions, and he was asked to become an Aryan descendant who hated the Jews and an imperial warrior who put life and death aside, and anyone who opposed the leader would become the object of his hatred. But this is not the real world, the Jews are not horned demons, and those who are executed for opposing dictatorship are not the bad people they deserve. Jojo's mother needs to tell her child the truth, but the possible price will be her own life and Jojo's life.
I think this is the cruellest part of Jojo's Whimsical World. Totalitarian ideas, in order to maintain their own domination, not only take away the innocence of children like Jojo, but also, through a rigid but effective indoctrination of thought, cultivate these ill-judging children into loyal believers attached to dictators, who are placed in their respective families, along with the ghosts in their heads, to monitor their loved ones. Thus, under the antagonism and hatred, the family is disintegrated, the family is torn apart, so that there is no ethnic group with the family as the unit, only the individual with the collective as the core.
War can take away not only lives, but also the souls that life should have guarded.
Jojo's mother doesn't want his children to live in a world shrouded in lies and totalitarianism from beginning to end, and she needs to evoke Jojo's conscience. When those who rebelled against the dictatorship were hung in the street to intimidate everyone, Jojo, who tried to avoid the scene, was stopped by his mother, because she knew that the way to defeat the dictatorship was to face it squarely.
This is a memory belonging to ordinary Germans during World War II. Because of the fanaticism of a certain group of people, they are forced to get involved in this bloody war, and under the coercion of totalitarianism, they have little choice, and they can only keep their lives by remaining silent, but the premise of surviving in this way is to abandon their humanity and bury their bravery.
What they chose was a life of fragmentation, and to this day, some pieces are still not spliced.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > who is bearing the cost of this war? </h1>
At the end of the film, the Allies invade Berlin, and the undercurrent of the city eventually becomes a battlefield of gunfire. By this time Jojo had already lost his mother, and when he tried to vent his anger on the Jewish girl hiding in the house, he began to suspect and began to panic, because he was in love with the Jew.
Love is an emotion that comes from within and cannot be suppressed. And Jojo was able to fall in love with the Jewish girl because he denied the creed that the Jew was a demon and accepted that she spoke the same language and shared the same thoughts as himself. This infuriated the ghost living in his head, and Jojo began to reflect on why such a ghost existed. In this reflection, there is an essential question, that is, who created this war, and who is bearing the cost of this war?
After World War II, Churchill defined it as an "unwanted war," but the war still took place and took thousands of lives. They are the direct victims of the battlefield, but by no means the only ones. Those persecuted opponents, those coerced conformists, those who are seduced followers, some of them have given their lives, and some of them have given their humanity. Under the vicious battlefield, what is torn apart is the background of civilization, but the manifestation is a barbaric and primitive desire. How many warriors are unclaimed? And how many families are torn apart? How many of them can return to their homeland, and how many of them can give their mother a hug?
In the movie, the most touching scene is the words that Jojo's best friend Jokie said to Jojo after the war: "I want to go home to see my mother, I need a hug." "This wish is simple, but the only premise is that they are all alive, and only when they are alive can they feel touch and embrace. And the most cruel thing about war is that living is a luxury in itself.
Why use a child's perspective to document this history? I think one of the reasons for this is that what children can see is often very simple and pure, and is avoiding a war really that complicated? If everyone wants to go home and give their parents a hug, how can war happen?
The answers to these questions are more complex than the questions themselves.
If the years are quiet, who wants their children to become warriors?
When Jojo's mother shouted at the warrior who had just returned: Go home and kiss mom, I think in Jojo's mind I have found a weapon against the ghost in my head.