Taika Waitit strapped on his weird boots for his latest film, JoJo Rabbit, in which he plays – of all things – a dithering Hitler.
The Thor: Ragnarak director, who is half Jewish and half Maori, turns up as the fascist leader in the first trailer for his ‘anti-hate’ World War II satire.
But it’s not Hitler as we know it.
Taika, who also wrote and directed the film plays Hitler as the bumbling imaginary friend of JoJo Bunny (Roman Griffin Davis), a lonely German boy who joins the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany.
https://twitter.com/TaikaWaititi/status/1153691740596924416
In a first look at the film, as JoJo broods over his low social status, Hitler quips with a shrug: ‘Let them say whatever they want!
‘People used to say a lot of nasty things about me – “Oh this guy’s a lunatic, look at that psycho, he’s going to get us all killed!”‘
So. Strange.
When poor JoJo learns that his mum (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic, he has to confront his own prejudices.
The flick, based on Christine Leuenen’s book Caging Skies, has a stellar cast featuring, well, pretty much everyone who is talented and funny.
Rebel Wilson will be sharing the screen with Stephen Merchant (can’t wait), Alfie Allen and Sam Rockwell.
Taika, who is reportedly set to direct Thor 4, recently opened up about how weird it is to be playing Hitler in his film.
‘It was very strange for me to have to put on the suit and put the mustache on or things like that,’ he said at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
‘It’s quite confronting and I don’t necessarily like seeing myself like that.’
He added: ‘I play an imaginary friend who is sort of a kind of cross between Hitler and all this little boy’s heroes.
‘So it’s all kind of combined into this weird version of… it’s not Hitler, I’m not trying to play that character, so I didn’t do much research since. I’m not trying to be authentic.’
The New Zealand-born filmmaker previously revealed that years went by between writing JoJo Rabbit’s first scene and the film’s end cut.
Speaking at BAFTA’s Screenwriters Lecture Series last year, he was asked how he finds returning to a script he had written years ago.
‘I’ve done that with all my films.’ he replied.
‘I’d say that most of them, apart from my first one, that was very fast in making that, the rest of them were at least five years between writing the first draft and making the film.’
JoJo Rabbit hits cinemas on October 18.
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