The Zookeeper's Wife

Year: 2017
Genre: Drama
Directed: Niki Caro
Stars: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Bruhl, Timothy Radford, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas, Michael McElhatton, Val Maloku, Martha Issova, Daniel Ratimorsky, Frederick Preston
Production: Scion Films

There will always be films based on WWII. The war demonstrated and exemplified both humanities best and worst attributes. There simply is no limit to the amount of stories one could tell nor the amount of messages that can be smuggled into the margins. Looking to honor the brave sacrifices made; Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) might do the trick. In the mood for dynamic character pieces; how about Patton (1970) or Downfall (2004)? Vicious black comedy; The Americanization of Emily (1964), demure airiness; Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005).

Epic fight choreography...Kung Fury (2015)

Yet there's really only one "acceptable" way of making films about the Holocaust. At least the makers of The Zookeeper's Wife seem to think so. Thus the film based on Diane Ackerman's book, tells a stately version of a harrowing experience that on film, begs to be compared to Schindler's List (1993). It pulls at the heart-strings right where it needs to. It lingers at just the right moments of emaciated dignity and it lionizes its characters with the force of its true-to-life story. It also rings disappointingly false. Is it just me or are Holocaust movies losing their way?

The film starts the summer before the German and Russian invasion of Poland in 1939. Antonia (Chastain) and Jan (Heldenbergh) Zabinski work as zoologists at the Warsaw Zoo and spend most of their time tending to their animals and holding dinner parties for their intellectual friends. When the war makes it to their front doorstep, they have no choice but to relinquish their prized stock to German zoologist Lutz Heck (Bruhl) who also gives them permission to convert the zoo into a pig farm. It is then the Zabinski's realize that they have the space, resources and ability to hide Jews escaping from the infamous Ghetto Warschau.

Now this is an awesome movie!

So they do just that; no second thought, no consideration of the risks involved and no weighing of the pros and cons. If this movie is to be believed as fact, the Zabinski's didn't possess the steely-eyed negotiation abilities of Oskar Schindler, nor did they have the craven self-interest of Leopold Socha (who's story is recalled in Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness (2011)). The Zookeeper's Wife for all its inherent story potential, starts with a pair of saintly characters and ends with a pair of saintly characters.

This is not to say that Antonia and Jan Zabinski were not, in reality wonderful people. They were awarded the Righteous Among Nations by the State of Israel for their efforts to save what Antonia described as "shipwrecked souls". Yet the inherent risk of doing the right thing, when the right thing could get you killed is never entirely present. There are several characters that come and go, and a few fleeting moments where it looks like the Zabinski's placed their trust in the wrong person. Then there's a wink, a nod and another scene of laying and wait.

To offset the lack of tension, Zookeeper's Wife endows the movie with a subplot involving a Jewish girl (Haas), whose rape by two German soldiers, beguiles Jan to save her from the ghetto. Much of the film is spent with Antonia emphatically ushering her out of a catatonic state with art utensils and a fluffy rabbit. While these scenes inject just enough humanism without feeling melodramatic, one can't help shake the feeling they were added just so Jessica Chastain has something to act against.

Don't make me get Hitler's Personal Trainer!

For what it's worth, Chastain turns in some splendid work. Which is more than can be said for poor Daniel Bruhl. Zookeeper's Wife requires of him to be not just a villain, but a representation of the entire Nazi Wehrmacht by the power of his position as Hitler's personal zoologist. Why on earth did they pin that particular swastika-shaped pin on a guy who could be liberally described as Amon Goeth's kid brother? His sexual advances towards Antonia don't even come across as creepy, they just come across as pathetic.

Had this film focused on the sophistication of the Polish resistance or made an effort to demonstrate the frightful omnipresence of the Nazis in Poland, then Zookeeper's Wife might have been a movie worth the time to see. As it stands however, Jessica Chastain's performance is about the only thing keeping this meager movie afloat. That and a felicitously budgeted zoo bombing that was honestly done better in Underground (1995).

Final Grade: C-