The Zookeeper's Wife proves that Caro, along with her cinematographer Andrij Parekh ( Blue Valentine), can take on a film that has elements of a thriller, a war film and an historical drama about the most shocking events of the last 100 years, and turn in a finished product that doesn't ever lose sight of the human scale and never descends into the merely harrowing. Apart from the inexplicable farce of The Vinter's Luck adaptation, Caro has never put a foot wrong, and she is a gift to any screenplay with a strong female lead. In The Zookeeper's Wife, Antonina's guile and courage is the deciding factor within the confines of what is usually an almost exclusively male genre.Ĭaro ( Whale Rider, North Country) takes this rich material and makes something quite special from it. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsa. It's the heroism and fight-back of abused women everywhere. Read 9921 reviews from the worlds largest community for readers. Antonina spent her war saving lives at incredible personal risk while literally living behind enemy lines, fighting her covert battles in plain sight while she managed the egos and the fears of the men around her. The Zookeepers Wife delves into a little known aspect of World War II: the part played by the. Diane Ackerman combines extensive research and an exuberant writing style to re-create this fascinating, true-life storysharing Antoninas life as the zookeepers wife, while examining the disturbing obsessions at the core of Nazism. Daniel Bruhl ( Rush) turns up as the Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck, who in this telling has his eye on more than just Antonina's talent for elephant midwifery.Īnd it's this sideplot, as Heck tries to seduce Antonina while Jan is forced to look helplessly on, that takes The Zookeeper's Wife into unusual and very welcome territory. Next to her, Johan Heldenbergh ( The Broken Circle Breakdown) is stoic, warm and appropriately lugubrious as Jan. Chastain pulls off a credible Polish accent and navigates the twists and turns of Antonina's story with a tough, lucid and utterly believable performance.
Maybe the family dynamics weren't that strong, or the wife's chemistry with her husband. The setting is good, with the zoo and the animals giving a more realistic tone to everything. In the lead, Jessica Chastain puts daylight between herself and the pack in the race to be crowned the next Meryl Streep. The Zookeeper's wife is not a bad movie, it just fails to deliver the message and the feelings to the audience. In The Zookeeper's Wife, Kiwi director Niki Caro takes rich material and makes something quite special from it.
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