In Jojo Rabbit (2019), Jojo finds out that
his mother was hanged.
We only see her feet and not the face. Why so?
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4Why would it be necessary to show her face.?– Paulie_DCommented Feb 19, 2020 at 18:54
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I can't think of any movies that actually show the face of a hanged person outside of the horror genre– AlchemistCommented Feb 21, 2020 at 2:07
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2 Answers
There is no need to show her face as we know it is her from the shoes and Jojo's reaction, It's an artistic choice by the director. We can make some guesses as to why the choice was made. Its Jojo's story so it is more important to show the impact his mother's death has on him than to get some gruesome shots of her dead face, it makes it clear the person we are supposed to be empathising with and feeling sorrow for in the scene is Jojo. On top of that the focus on the shoes and his inability to tie them links into and re-enforces the wider themes of the film.
We don't see the faces of any of the hanged people, from anywhere close enough to identify them.
The movie carefully guides us on this earlier. We only see in close-up the feet of the earlier victims. We then see a lot of shots of his mother's shoes - walking, dancing… far more than we would ordinarily see of someone's feet.
That leads us to be able to grasp this reveal with no additional information. We are already very familiar with those shoes.
answered Feb 29, 2020 at 11:33
