Much of the time spent on the zoo is with the quiet moments trying to make the Jewish survivors feel like human beings again (the animals-in-cages metaphor is there). It's like getting punched in the stomach with every child. There's also a moment where Jan is literally loading children, who each raise their arms in anticipation, onto a train car.
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The movie can also lack subtlety, like watching Heck say three times he's a man of his word and will be trustworthy. Even when Antonina's son commits stupid mistake after stupid mistake, including impulsively insulting a Nazi officer to his back, there's little fear of some sort of retribution. This scene also stands out because the narrow escapes and close calls are surprisingly few and far between. It's a moment of tension that can be felt and it all goes away in a rush. After Antonina is caught talking to a very Jewish-looking "doctor" in her bedroom by the housekeeper, they just fire the housekeeper who leaves quietly and never comes back again. There are a handful of scenes where we worry whether they will be caught but they're defused so quickly and easily. The danger of hiding over 300 Jewish people over the course of the entire war feels absent, which is strange considering it should be felt in just about every moment. The zoo is a sanctuary compared to the Jewish ghettos. This is only one example of an element that, in order to maintain its dignified PG-13 rating, unfortunately undercuts the realism and power of its story.įor a Holocaust story set in Poland, the stakes feel abnormally low. The edits to work around this can be jarring and would take me out of the picture. Fair warning: there are plenty of animal deaths in this movie, though they are all dealt with off-screen with implied violence. It feels too restrained and some of those artistic compromises make for a movie that feels lacking and distracting at points. The Zookeeper's Wife, as a PG-13 movie, does not feel like the ideal way to tell this real-life story. When it comes to cruelty and human atrocity, you don't need to shove the audience's face in the mess to fully comprehend its distaste, but overly avoiding the reality can also be a detriment. Reluctantly, The Zookeeper's Wife feels a bit too sanitized for the story it's telling. The Holocaust is by nature such a horrific subject matter that it's hard to do it justice with a PG-13 or below rating, but it can be done with the right amount of artistic restraint as long as the overall story doesn't feel hobbled with limitations. However, it's also an indication that you need the right handling to do it justice.
The Zookeeper's Wife is one of those slice-of-life stories about good people risking much to save lives during the Holocaust that come from obscurity to remind you that there are still fresh, invigorating stories from a topic that can feel tapped out after 70 years. Feeling impotent to the horrors around them, Antonina and Jan risk everything to hide Jews in their zoo and eventually smuggle them out to safe houses. Their animals are slaughtered or moved to the Berlin Zoo, under the care of Nazi party member and amateur geneticist Lutz Heck (Daniel Bruhl). Their lives are thrown into turmoil when Germany invades and occupies Poland.
Yet despite having a few weaknesses, The Zookeeper's Wife is a remarkable tale of courage and sacrifice in one of the darkest periods of history.Īntonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain) and her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) are the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo. Still, there are some storytelling issues with all the time jumps and the progression from the husband and wife hiding just a handful of people to them becoming part a full-blown operation. Also, the score is quite evocative, heightening the drama and tension. And the costumes and sets are especially well-done, giving an authentic look and feel for the time period. Jessica Chastain gives an incredibly strong performance and is the heart of the film. Set in Warsaw on the eve of the German invasion a family that runs a zoo decides to stay and protect their zoo and its animals, and when they become aware of the oppression and abuse that the Jews are suffering at the hands of the German soldiers they become part of the underground sneaking Jews out of Warsaw and sheltering them in their zoo. Based on a true story, The Zookeeper's Wife is a compelling World War II drama about the effort to rescue Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.
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