The Zookeeper's Wife
Directed by: Niki Caro
Written by: Angela Workman - Based on the book by Diane Ackerman
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl, Timothy Radford, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas, Michael McElhatton, Val Maloku
Biography/Drama/History - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Mar 2017
Written by: Angela Workman - Based on the book by Diane Ackerman
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl, Timothy Radford, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas, Michael McElhatton, Val Maloku
Biography/Drama/History - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Mar 2017
It is hard to think of a more tense declaration and foreshadowing of doom than a film introduction setting the scene with “Poland, 1939”. We immediately realize we’re not in for butterflies and rainbows. No country lost more of its population per capita than Poland did in World War II. This Eastern European country was pulverized twice, first by Nazi Germany and then be marauding Soviets. Audiences are more than familiar with true story films set in the most notorious concentration camp of them all, Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in Poland, and a based on a true story film was even recently nominated for Best Foreign Film in 2011 with In Darkness, following a group of Jewish families hiding in the sewers of Lvov. The Zookeeper’s Wife joins this long line of heroic accounts and memoirs of Jews hiding from the Gestapo and the very few brave souls who attempted to shelter them.
Broad brush World War II histories mention Warsaw twice. The Warsaw Ghetto and its subsequent brutal liquidation are comprehensively covered in the history books as is the Warsaw Uprising by the Polish resistance Home Army. Both of these entities receive at least cursory recognition in The Zookeeper’s Wife, but they are not central locations or themes. Director Niki Caro’s film explores the efforts of the real life Zabinski family, centered on the matriarch, Antonina (Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane), and their efforts to function as a sort of waypoint on the Jewish Underground Railroad out of Warsaw.
Broad brush World War II histories mention Warsaw twice. The Warsaw Ghetto and its subsequent brutal liquidation are comprehensively covered in the history books as is the Warsaw Uprising by the Polish resistance Home Army. Both of these entities receive at least cursory recognition in The Zookeeper’s Wife, but they are not central locations or themes. Director Niki Caro’s film explores the efforts of the real life Zabinski family, centered on the matriarch, Antonina (Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane), and their efforts to function as a sort of waypoint on the Jewish Underground Railroad out of Warsaw.
The Zabinskis operate and run the day-to-day business of the Warsaw Zoo. The film’s first scene takes us on a tour of the park as Antonina checks in on the expectant elephant family, the predator cats, and the monkey cage as a trotting adolescent camel escorts her acting as co-pilot. According to screenwriter Angela Workman’s script, the Warsaw Zoo was a significant aerial target on 1 September 1939 as the Wehrmacht annihilated Poland’s token Army and swept across the country. Caro forces the audience to endure a brutal animal slaughter by air-to-ground munitions. Zebras are torn to shreds, mama and baby elephant are early collateral damage, and a suspiciously well-organized militia gathers at the zoo to shoot some more animals deemed threats to the general public.
I assume the invading Nazis were a greater threat at the time to public health and safety than papa elephant, but the militiamen are more than eager to hand their rifles over to the Germans after they’re finished with the animals. The new occupiers finish the job and ensure the audience understands the barbarity of the situation as they play target practice with most of the remaining animals. After Caro finally lets us go and moves on from blowing holes in most of the passengers of Noah’s Ark do we get down to what we’re all here for, the subterfuge of transporting and hiding Jews from the Ghetto right under the Nazi’s noses.
Antonina’s husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), rigs a system to take trash from the Ghetto to feed the pig farm the Zabinskis now run on behalf of the Third Reich and spirits two to three people at a time beneath the garbage in his truck. Using underground tunnels underneath some of the exhibits and their own basement to hide and shelter their charges, Caro (McFarland, USA) shows the Zabinskis save kids, women, and sometimes entire families right out of the Ghetto. The most shocking and long-term ‘guest’ is Urszula (Shira Haas), a pre-teen gang-raped by Nazis just off screen that is stomach-churning in the most extreme. Antonina, always shown cradling a baby, be it an elephant, bunny rabbit, and even lion cub, cradles Urszula in a similar manner as she very slowly reintegrates her back into reality.
The Nazi in charge of the place is Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl, Captain America: Civil War), who labels himself Hitler’s Chief Zoologist. Heck has two ambitions. One is to practice ethically suspect animal husbandry experiments attempting to reintroduce extinct species back into Germany and two is to attract the sexual attention of Antonina whom he takes a sleazy liking to. Caro opts for too literal showing us through body language the sloppy thrust and repel attempts between the two. Heck has Antonina hold onto a female bison during that animal’s rough impregnation while Heck holds onto her from behind mimicking the conjugal action. We get it Ms. Caro; no need to take it over the top.
The Zookeeper’s Wife makes a wild and off-putting jump three quarters of the way through as it tries to squeeze the last three years of the war into 30 or so minutes. Antonina’s son turns into an inexplicable jackass whose only purpose is to skew the plot where it needs to go and Antonina gives birth out of nowhere to show the giant leaps in time the film skips over. I can only assume the 2007 non-fiction book by Diane Ackerman upon which these events are based does not come across in the same haphazard and choppy manner. The Zookeeper’s Wife is acutely graphic in parts and I felt more squeamish than I did during the entire movie about human cannibalism I saw last week. The Zabinski family’s endeavors are only a minor entry in pop culture’s examination of the Polish experience in World War II not because of anything they did or did not do, but the film introducing them to the world is a middle-of-the-road drama which many will only remember for quadruped carnage rather than the savior of some of the world’s most innocent victims.
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