Script Analysis: “Jojo Rabbit” — Part 3: Characters

Read the script for the award-winning film and analyze all week.

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this bi-weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Characters.

Characters are the players in our stories. They participate in scenes, move the plot forward through action and dialogue, influence each other, evolve and change. Each has their own distinct backstory, personality, world view, and voice. When a writer does their best, digging deep into their characters, tapping into their souls, the players in our stories magically lift up off the printed page and come to life in a reader’s imagination.

But there’s this: In a screenplay, characters exist for a reason. Hence my principle: Character = Function. Writers can shade and shape a story’s character in limitless ways. But if you dig down deep enough, you can find each character’s narrative function, and that can become a lens through which you develop the players in your stories.

Same thing with script and movie analysis: Look at each character and think about why they exist and what their function is.

Today we discuss the characters in the script for Jojo Rabbit. You may download a PDF of the script here.

A list of the key players:

Jojo

Adolf

Rosie

Elsa

Yorki

Captain Klenzendorf

Finkel

Fraulein Rahm

Deertz

Screenplay by Taika Waititi, based upon the book ‘Caging Skies’ by Christine Leunens.

Plot Summary: A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy named Jojo whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler , Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

Writing Exercise: Think about each character. What’s their function?

Major kudos to Gareth Boucher for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdown.

To download a PDF of the breakdown for Jojo Rabbit, go here.

For Part 1, to read the Scene-By-Scene Breakdown discussion, go here.

For Part 2, to read the Plot discussion, go here.

You may download 100+ movie scripts from the last decade — free and legal — here.

I hope to see you in the RESPONSE section about this week’s script: Jojo Rabbit, one of two most favorite movies in 2019 along with Parasite.