The Tragic Optimism of Taika Waititi
In the book by Milan Kundera ‘The unbearable lightness of being’ life is described as the following: the outline and shape of life is sad, inherently so. We are on a one-way road to dying, and along the way, we will lose people we care about, we will suffer, physically, mentally and emotionally. But, in the enchanting novel, Kundera argues that whilst this is true, the content of life, that which swells and bursts from this sad shape, is inherently happy.
Milan Kundera’s book is one of my favourite, 10/10, would recommend. The Czech writer was exiled from his home country in 1975 and a lot of his work reflects this theme of lacking a home, of being unanchored.
Now, I am unsure whether Kundera was purposely speaking to tragic optimism. In this novel, he is said - by smarter, better read people than I - to be often alluding to Nietzsche’s own eternal return and the “greatest weight” of this, hence the references to lightness I believe. (Nietzsche’s eternal return is the idea that all of the events in world endlessly repeat themselves through an eternal sequence of cycles - but some (Robert Wick) argues that it is not the specifics of the events that this is focusing on, but the unending prison of infinite existence, aka life.)
But, regardless of whether Kundera meant to speak to tragic optimism or not, he does, and very well. It is this idea of form and content, which is at the heart of tragic optimism. It is a path inherently of loss, of finiteness, bookmarked by tragedy. But along the shape which we live our life along, there is happiness. Happiness within, not working towards but working through. Hence, I think, the name itself does a good job of explaining itself. Optimistic in the tragic sense, yes we are going to lose, and death is inevitable. But that does not mean happiness is impossible, not even unlikely in fact.
This branch of existentialism is something Victor Frankl coined the term for. In his work ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ he argues that we can find optimism even in the face of the tragedies life offers. His own experiences of the Holocaust, spending three years in Auschwitz, influenced his work. That, perhaps gives you the most blunt exploration of this idea, springing from one of the most horrific episodes in human history, was a desperate, but stubbornly unflinching desire to find a light. To hope.
In the dark there is light, sadness and happiness find some balance, not necessarily an equal one, but some balance.
This, is what brings me to Taika Waiti, the 45-year-old Kiwi who has earned the ever prestigious and sought after title of my favourite director. Through his movies, from Eagle vs Shark, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit and the reinvigorated Thor franchise, Waiti asks the important questions.
Like what about the young German kids who’s imaginary friend was Hitler?
Because, eternal return aside, that definitely happened on this world.
Kiwi Taika Waititi, 46, from somewhere in New Zealand. The man who’s ideas have been (grossly) (mis-(?))interpreted for this piece.
His movies are a tightrope walk between light and dark, balancing humour with poignant sad moments in a way that made me understand my own philosophy - my own tragic optimism.
WARNING: SPOILERS LAY AHEAD.
ANOTHER WARNING: I COULD HAVE MISINTERPRETED HIS WORDS AND GOT THIS ENTIRELY WRONG, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
At the heart of some of Waiti’s stories are tragedies about heart-break and loss. An orphaned boy finding a home only to nearly lose it again (Hunt for the Wilderpeople); the reality of a young boy brainwashed by actual Nazi Germany, and of his country taking his mum from him (Jojo Rabbit); the story of an estranged father who couldn’t be further from the man the son has dreamt of (Boy); and a man losing both his father, and his home (Thor: Ragnorak).
Jojo Rabbit,
Jojo Rabbit centres on Jojo’s imagined reality of the Nazi regime, and his stubborn determination to cling to the idealised version he has of them in his head. He clings to this (Waititi plays his imaginary friend Hitler) despite the growing evidence of its barbarism and literal evil nature. This is a child’s point of view of a very inhuman world. Which, in of itself, is a harrowing sentence to consider. To remember children lived, and grew up through WWII and had to deal with it as well as the aftermath. They were moulded and shaped inescapably by it. The war we speak of in terms of near legend was their reality, and remains their nightmares.
Taika Waititi (Hitler) and Roman Griffin Davis (not Hitler) respectively starred as realistically, the duo which I maintain must’ve happened. At least one young boy in Nazi Germany must’ve had Hitler as an imaginary friend.
One of the movies few unquestionably good characters is Jojo’s mother, played by Scarlett Johansson, Rosie Betzler. The sympathetic mother who hides a young girl, Elsa Korr played by Thomasin McKenzie, who is Jewish, in her house. She eventually pays the ultimate price for this. From the beginning she’s against her son’s vehement Nazism, they clash, rather hilariously. She once made sure he looked up at the dead who hung in their city’s square, refusing to let him ignore the monstrosities of his country. She later of course, would occupy this position, killed for her desperate attempt to help. Our most morally driven character in Jojo Rabbit is killed off. An abrupt but apt reminder of the reality of Nazi Germany (and life?), of what happened to people like her, people who tried to help. But, before her ending, before our reminder of the wider picture of what’s going, we have a near endless bout of optimism, smiles and jokes from her. We have the content of happiness of our characters, but outline of sadness, of struggle only to end in tragedy and loss in the positions they occupy.
For all his ineptitude as a child-soldier, Yorki does have the single best line of the movie, at a time when the far-right isn’t on the rise, but has risen and taken multiple governments.
“It’s not a good time to be a Nazi.” - Yorki, during the final ten minutes of Jojo Rabbit.
Alongside losing his mother, Jojo has to grapple with the fact everything he was (repeatedly) told, wasn’t just a lie, but was something far worse. The same evil which would take his mother from him was that which he embraced joyously. The show bounds from gags about the semantics of saying ‘heil’ whenever one large group encountered another, to the very real reality of the terror the SS posed to supposedly loyal Germans. Jojo’s character is a careful balancing act between reality and humour, between making us laugh and reminding us that all of this really happened. Every joke is tinged with a reminder of the loss that took place within my grandparents lifetime.
Through Yorki’s character we get some hilarious moments (in his excitement to see Jojo once more the now child soldier drops the back of the panzerschreck he was holding, and blows up a building) matched up with the fact he becomes a child soldier - the likes of which we know the Nazis used in the last gasp attempts at war. But, stepping back from how Waiti laces humour through these tragedies, we are dealing with one of the darkest times in recent history, if not beyond. But within this horror, Waiti is finding light, he’s finding moments to laugh and smile and we cling to them. We cling to Yorki’s unrelenting optimism ignoring the fact he’s literally a child soldier. We laugh at Jojo’s attempt to write a book about the “horned” Jew ignoring the fact this isn’t actually much of an exaggeration and that anti-semetic conspiracy theories are on the rise once more.
Anti-semetic propaganda from Nazi Germany includes The Eternal Jew. This is a ‘documentary’ about the Jewish people, portraying them as subhuman creatures consumed by sex and money. The constant depictions of Jews as vermin, subhuman and problems that should be dealt with aren’t too far off Jojo’s attempt to write a book about them, nor from modern conspiracy theories.
In these three characters, we have the most adorable and innocent of the bunch forced into becoming a child soldier, but still upbeat and excited whenever he sees his best friend. A mother determined to save a young girl, persecuted by her own home country, at the cost of her own life. And a main character who’s a Nazi fanatic. In these, Waititi tells a tale of life, and one of tragic optimism. There is something in the way of a happy ending here, but without Rosie Betzler who died for her altruism, and one that occurs within the wider context of the Holocaust.
Just as Frankl, despite living through this very same event, found light amongst the dark. We’re dealing with a movie whose outline is sad: a world war and genocide. But within it, Waiti in his quest to find humanity in the darkest corners and under the most unlikely unturned stones, we are given humour and a reason to smile.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
It’s not just in Jojo Rabbit he explores themes of tragic optimism, or ones that run parallel. Three years earlier, in his Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Waiti turns the funeral of Bella Faulkner, the movie’s impossibly perfect aunt/surrogate mother, into one of his funniest scenes. Again, we’re seeing one of our morally best characters dying. Waititi is reminding us that the best don’t get the best. Life isn’t fair and we all don’t get to be happy, however kind and caring we are.
The funeral scene is done in a hallmark fashion of how Waiti works. This tragic loss comes just as Ricky, disenfranchised city bad boy, had just seemed to find a home with his adoptive parents against the odds. A jolted reminder to the watcher that life gives, but ultimately, life takes everything too, and often before we expect too. Waititi is showing that whatever happiness we have, or can struggle for, is often fleeting and never eternal.
The rest of the movie spits in the face of this tragedy, not refuting the idea that happiness ends, and is doomed to. But, in spite of the finiteness, it laughs oh so boldly at this fact. It revels in brilliance and humour with Hector and Ricky going on the run in the most chaotic of ways, finding family as they do. Inspired by tragedy and an ending, it gives us a tale, adapted from Wild Pork and the Wildercress by Barry Crump, that shows us how to hope and be happy in spite of inevitable endings.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople has one of the finest culminating chases of all time.
Off the back of tragedy, it reminds us there’s not just light in the dark enough to keep going, but there’s light enough to dance and laugh and live in, regardless of the dark. The movie also makes something absolutely brilliant out of Rachel House’s Paula Hall, a social care worker who could terrify Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.
Waititi takes two very different characters affected by loss, and shoves them together on the most amazing of adventures and in it, finds happiness where they would least expect it. There are of course moments of dark throughout, especially losing Tupac (Ricky’s dog, not the famous rapper, he’s in Cuba).
The ideas Waiti returns to are inherently, brilliantly human ones, for better or worse. Including the simple fact to be human is to be finite, to be human is to be promised one thing only, that you’ll die. And to this promise, he offers a counterweight. He has every absurdity, every joke and punchline and character who makes me cry with laughter, to even out the weight of being. He uses them to shine light in the dark, to let us laugh in the face of endings and find happiness where one might only find sadness.
In the past, whenever I have tried to explain this idea to people, they usually seem pretty put out by what they say is the morbidity of it. Which, I think, is more the due to the frankness with which it confronts death, a topic most run screaming from. But it does this calmly, accepting it for its truth. Yes, it will happen to me. That does not change where I am right now, or what I can do, or where I can dare to find happiness.
But taking it beyond, or perhaps withdrawing back from talking about death, and looking at the world in which we find ourselves. I have found fertile ground in our world for tragic optimism - which does make me sound like I’m trying to convert people. We live in a world fraught with existential threats (climate change, viruses, global disasters, growing geopolitical divisions, lack of happiness or satisfaction with life etc. etc). We may not solve all of these issues, they may well overcome us. I for one, do not think we will deal with climate change in an effective or meaningful manner, nor do we seem too put out on dealing with coronavirus apart from in the vaccine department. But this does not dampen or detract or ruin where we are, nor cripple any potential for happiness. These things are problems, yes, but within the darkness of them, there is potential to find light.
Within the wide shape of the world, in amongst all these grand forms there is happiness in every nook and cranny, regardless of how short lived it might be. It’s always there. Our times remind us that not everything is good, goodness isn’t promised, and the ending we’d all like sure as hell isn’t coming. We won’t get enough time with loved ones. We won’t get to do everything, see everything, love everyone and live forever. But we will get time with loved ones. We will get to do a lot, travel far and wide, love many many people, be loved, and put in a pretty damn good shift on this planet.
Big Vic Frankl,
This is sad, I’m not going to tell you it isn’t. That’s the point.
Frankl accepted the sadness and tragedy on scales most of us think impossible. He sat with the horror forced upon him, saw the very worst and beyond that, looked at life, and found it not to be some great shining standard of gold. But he still found happiness. To think we only have or deserve happiness is an infantile idea when interrogated. But we can sit with the fact lives are often tragic, and know we can still be happy too.
There are no fields we can romp in together, radiant and golden. But there is right here, right now, and there is happiness that can be found in that.