All told The Zookeeper’s Wife is a story worth telling, even if there are a good number of not-so-hot spots along the way. They do not come away unscathed, but it is evident that these were people who would have fared far worse if they didn’t do anything at all. More than 300 Jews were rescued because of the zoo maneuvers, and the film does a good job working through the moral struggles of people who could not turn a blind eye to injustice. (There is also quite a bit of animal killing – all faked, I’m sure, but some in the crowd I saw this with were audibly revolted, so this is your trigger warning.) These are disappointing style choices considering there are other moments in the film that work so well.
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The movie also finds a way to end with a bit of a chase sequence. The Zabinski basement is site to a Passover seder at the same moment the ghetto is burned, and the intercutting is far from subtle. Caro goes in for closeups on each cherubic, smiling child with outstretched arms, waiting for a lift up into the cattle car.īut other scenes lack this perfect simplicity. There are some devastating images of children being loaded on to trains, their jolly, bearded teacher (Arnost Goldflam) trying to prevent them from panicking, though well aware himself they are en route to their doom. The film almost gets into interesting territory with their relationship, but soon chucks that in favor of Lutz being just another diabolical Nazi.įew of the hidden Jews are given the time to establish themselves as real characters, but Caro does good work with shorthand. He has eyes for Antonina, and they bond over their love of animals. Tension mounts though when Brühl’s Lutz (who has a mad scheme to breed aurochs on the property) keeps sniffing around. There are additional grace notes, such as an evening ritual when the basement of refugees come up for air once Antonina gives the all-clear by playing her piano. And though our righteous Gentile heroes are putting their lives on the line to smuggle Jews out with a garbage removal scheme, other Poles dress up to take the second world war equivalent of a selfie in front of the fortified gate. Despite starvation and terror, there are still teachers and pupils. The scenes in the ghetto are horrifying and, impressively, able to find corners of life that haven’t been exposed in the myriad Holocaust films that have come before. The movie works best, though, when director Caro keeps things dialogue-free. Now introduce these animals into the equation and the story of The Zookeeper’s Wife is added to the list. The actual European actors, the Flemish Heldenbergh and German Daniel Brühl (playing “Hitler’s head zoologist” Lutz Heck), pump the brakes a bit on their inflection, leaving Chastain out to dry by comparison. 4/10 It’s hard to believe any story of defiance against the Nazi regime, as most tell tales of the most courageous acts in the face of overwhelming odds. Chastain goes all-in on her Polish accent, to the point of distraction. But by the time she’s giving CPR to a baby elephant as the mama elephant trumpets with worry, it begins to feel like a Monty Python sketch. She rides her bike through the Warsaw zoo, feeding apples to hippopotamuses, a small camel trotting with her. The opening scenes are a giddy swirl of Antonina’s kindness. There are simply way too many moments like the howler cited above to recommend this without serious reservations.
Which isn’t to say this is a disaster director Niki Caro actually has a considerable amount of storytelling finesse here and there. All the elements are lined up for a major prestige success, until the movie itself starts to roll. But the sex meanders from the grotesque – a scene where he rubs against her while two bison mate – to the surprisingly tame in a film that prefers tastefully underplaying Holocaust clichés to building its own legitimate drama.It’s a flabbergasting bit of writing and fairly indicative of why this adaptation of a successful book with an A-list actress is being released in March and not November. Instead, Chastain gets some chemistry going with Daniel Bruehl, as a Nazi commander with a taste for animal husbandry. As her oddly unengaged zoologist husband, the Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh appears to be working in a different movie altogether. Jessica Chastain can't figure out a woman whose initial awkwardness and anxiety quickly give way to heroic sang-froid, any more than Angela Workman's script (an adaptation of the book by Diane Ackerman) can explain why some people choose to save others.
But soon, Antonina's idyllic life as the chatelaine of the Warsaw zoo is overturned by Nazis and the endearing animal images are replaced with a run-of-the-mill Holocaust movie in which she runs a safe house for escaping Jews.
You may feel you've been swept all the way back to Out of Africa: The Zookeeper's Wife opens in a sunny villa, where a child slumbers beside two lion cubs.