Chastain does her best not to portray Antonina as a saint. This couple had no idea what fate was in store for the Jews they rescued they simply understood that a great injustice was under way and sought to help in any way they could. It reminds us that not all acts of courage have to be grand in nature they just have to be effective and get to the heart of the crisis at hand.
But the movie’s greatest accomplishment is putting faces on selfless deeds and lives snatched from certain death. Caro has always been quite good at allowing her characters a breadth of emotional expression, and it may surprise some that it’s the men in this story who seem to emote the most.ĭespite its frequently gloomy weather and less than picture perfect settings (the film was actually shot in the Czech Republic), The Zookeeper’s Wife has a certain beauty to its look and atmosphere, especially in the exotic nature of the zoo itself. The means of deception are clever (dyeing women’s hair blonde and sending them right out the front gate with forged papers, pretending they are a visiting cousin is a particular favorite), and the tension rises with every successful rescue, since we assume at some point, this will all come crumbling down. Since the Jews must remain under the home of the married couple until it is safe to leave, Antonina develops a system whereby playing music on her piano is a sign that they must stay hidden, while another signal means they can come up briefly for air and daylight.
#RATING THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE PROFESSIONAL#
But he sees a kindred spirit in Antonina, and the two engage in a type of professional flirtation that she allows to walk the line between attraction and mutual admiration for the other’s abilities in order to keep suspicion off her husband who takes garbage trucks in and out of the ghetto, filling them with a handful of people and then covering them with organic waste.Īs The Zookeeper’s Wife goes on, we begin to view the cages and other isolated areas of the zoo not as places of confinement but as a means of escape. He’s especially keen to breed two different animals lines in the hopes of bringing back a species from extinction. Heck has no real interest in the Jewish “problem” or the issues of the ghetto and beyond. The heart and soul of the film is Antonina, who is known as an animal whisperer and later becomes something of a Nazi whisperer to Hitler’s chief zoologist Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl of Captain America: Civil War ), perhaps the most complex and fascinating character in this story. This is a story about seeing a situation as appalling and actually getting up off one’s ass and doing something, rather than looking on in shame or guilt, and doing nothing. This is not a story about doing something for profit or power or strategic advantage. I mean, a (non-Jewish) couple took advantage of the trust the Nazis placed in them and ended up rescuing 300 people. Daniel Bruhl is on autopilot as a sneering Nazi with eyes on both the Zabinskis animals and Antonina herself, and Johan Heldenbergh whom you may have noticed as the sad-eyed writer and star of The Broken Circle Breakdown a few years back is woefully underused as Jan.So the question that bothered me was Why? Based on real events, The Zookeeper’s Wife (written by Angela Workman, from the book by Diane Ackerman) builds a wonderful case for helping people because it’s the right thing to do. And while Chastain cant not be interesting as the inflexible Antonina, who figures out a way to resist the Nazi occupation while pretending to collaborate, shes clearly filling in the blanks of a character thats as flatly conceived as everything else in the picture.
Which makes sense, I guess, but its still disappointing.īased on Dianea Ackermans nonfiction book, The Zookeepers Wife is a functional but stiff historical drama about Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who used their Warsaw zoo to shelter and rescue hundreds of Polish Jews during the Second World War.Īngela Workmans screenplay draws some very simple moral lines: the Germans are cruel, the Poles are noble, the Jews are scared and grateful for any help.
#RATING THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE MOVIE#
The Zookeepers Wife is the first movie from Jessica Chastains production company, Freckle Films, and shes playing it a little safe. Jessica Chastain stars as Antonina Zabinski in The Zookeeper's Wife.
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