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It stars Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl and Michael McElhatton. The film tells the true story of how Jan and Antonina Żabiński rescued hundreds of Polish Jews from the Germans by hiding them in their Warsaw zoo during World War II. It’s kind of weird to say “lower your expectations” on this kind of film but, well, it can’t hurt.The Zookeeper's Wife is a 2017 war drama film directed by Niki Caro, written by Angela Workman and based on Diane Ackerman's non-fiction book of the same name. I see that my concerns are shared with others who disliked the film-which, I hasten to point out, I didn’t, actually-so I suspect (as usual) it comes down to what you, personally, bring to the film. I mean, maybe that sort of melodrama occurred, but I can’t help but feel that if you were risking your life, moment-to-moment, to saves the lives of dozens of others against a recognized evil, you would be especially understanding of each others’ feelings. There’s a weird conflict between the married zookeepers, where He’s jealous of Her because of the Nazi, and that felt genuinely false to me. There’s more of a kind of polite respect here than empathy. Given her success in winning me over previously, I’m sort of inclined to think this is a matter of the director, the story and perhaps the editing. It’s not that she’s not good it’s that she’s sort of Streep-ian. I usually go into Chastain movies thinking she’s over-hyped, until she wins me over somehow (like Marion Cotillard), but this time, I wasn’t super impressed.
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Unless we stretch the definition of “nazi” to include Adam Sandler. (Unless…no, my memory of The Zookeeper is blissfully blurry but I don’t believe there were any Nazis involved). But have you seen it in Poland? This year? In a zoo? Sure, you’ve seen it before: Sneaking out people from under the Nazi’s noses, the assertion of authority, the living underground in darkness, the close brushes with death. He can’t keep his fellow krauts from ultimately wiping the zoo out, but in an act of defiance, the zoo-peeps figure out they can turn their zoo into a pig farm for the Germans, while smuggling Jews out of the ghetto. They save as many of their animals as they can, and then keep things running with the help of an old, now Nazi, friend (Daniel Bruhl, a Spanish actor who’s always on hand to play The Hun, as in Inglorius Basterds or Joyeux Noel) who, of course, at no time would ever use his power to make it with Jessica Chastain. Quick capsule: A zookeeper (Flemish actor Johan Heldenberg) and his wife (Jessica Chastain), who despite the title is as much a zookeeper as her husband (from the looks of things) find themselves occupied by those Nasty Nazis, who wreck up their zoo. Johann Heldenberg and his elephants can’t believe what I’m saying. We’ve seen some great movies about the Holocaust in Poland, too, like Aftermath (Poklosie) and The Innocents. That streak would actually curb our moviegoing for a while, because it was just too hard to follow up. It also didn’t help, I’m sure, that this followed our 5-run-classic-streak (12 Angry Men, Witness for the Prosecution, Guys and Dolls, Casablanca, West Side Story). And the RT split (60/80) suggests that we might be suffering a bit from moviegoing excess vs. I don’t want to damn it with faint praise, though. I don’t suspect Caro et al of simply trying to cadge historical horror to give their film some dramatic oomph, but it could come off that way given the almost rote feeling of the thing. But after the animals are slaughtered, you have a pretty standard “Good guy hides Jews from Nazis” story which lacks the mawkish effectiveness of, say, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas but also the subtle power of a Sarah’s Key.