This and Parasite are my two favorite movies in 2019. How Taika Waititi managed to pull off a deft balancing act - comedy and drama about a Nazi youth - is amazing.

For everything that goes on in the movie, it is at its emotional core a story of dehumanization --> humanization. Jojo begins a victim of anti-semitic propaganda and projects that xenophobia onto Elsa when he first becomes aware Rosie (Jojo's mother) has been hiding Elsa in the house's attic. Over time, Jojo comes to see the humanity in Elsa, even to the point of developing romantic feelings for her.

If you step outside the movie and consider it amidst the current trend of bigotry and hatred toward The Other, the movie offers a different path, one which embraces our differences as minimal compared to our shared humanity.

This is a special movie and one definitely relevant for our zeitgeist.