The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017)

Directed by: Niki Caro | 127 minutes | biography, drama, history, war | Actors: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl, Timothy Radford, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas, Michael McElhatton, Val Maloku, Martha Issová, Daniel Ratimorský, Frederick Preston, Theo Preston, Viktoria Zakharyanova

In the worst times, the greatest heroes often rise. Often in places where you did not expect them in the first place. ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ (2016) is such a film about heroes from an unexpected quarter, Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina. On the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the couple runs Warsaw’s showpiece: the zoo. When the Nazis bomb the city on September 1, 1939, little of the beautiful animal park remains. Despite this, the Zabinskis manage to turn their own calamity into hope. Thanks to close contacts with Hitler’s personal zoologist Lutz Heck, who plans to revive the extinct aurochs, they devise a ruse not to close the doors of their zoo completely: they propose to continue as a pig farm, in order to to provide meat to the German patrol stationed on the site. In reality, the pig farm is just a cover to smuggle dozens of Jews out of the ghetto in the peel cart and hide them in the zoo. In this way, Jan and Antonina managed to save a total of more than 300 people’s lives. Truly an act of heroism, about which the American writer Diane Ackerman wrote the non-fiction bestseller ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’; she based herself on previously unpublished diary entries by Antonina herself. A story that is so personal and appeals to the imagination naturally cries out for a film adaptation, and there is now.

In ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ initially nothing seems to be in the air. The zoo of Jan (the Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh) and Antonina (Jessica Chastain) is an idyllic place, where people and animals live together in a peaceful way. Antonina in particular has a magical connection with the animals; during her daily cycle through the park, a young dromedary hops faithfully after her and she knows how to put even the most shy animals at ease. She always carries an animal with her, like a child in her arms. And when an elephant’s nocturnal delivery threatens to go wrong, Antonina miraculously calms the animal and gives the calf a safe and warm welcome. Behind all that warmth and harmony, however, lurks an enormous threat, and it is already roaming the park in the person of German zoologist Lutz Heck (Daniël Brühl), who admires Antonina for more than one reason. Meanwhile, Jan speculates on a departure, because he has heard reports about the Nazis wanting to invade Poland. However, Antonina does not want to just abandon her animals, not without a concrete threat.

But then it is already too late, because on September 1, 1939, the Nazis carry out bombing raids on Warsaw. The zoo is badly hit: many animals are killed, others are confiscated by the Nazis. Jewish people in the city are driven into ghettos, their homes destroyed and their shops looted. In the ghetto, they must wait for the terrible, inevitable fate that awaits them. Antonina proposes to Jan to help their friend Magda (Efrat Dor) by hiding her in their villa at the zoo. Saving one life tastes like more, and they soon turn to Heck and ask if they can run a pig farm for the Germans on their property. He agrees on the condition that he can carry out his diabolical plan to bring the aurochs back to the living on their property. Under the nose of Heck and a dozen German soldiers, Jan increasingly drives his shell cart full of people in hiding onto the site. He also regularly takes people to a safe place. But Heck isn’t crazy, just a little distracted by the pretty Antonina maybe. However, the suspicious behavior of her son Ryszard (Val Maloku) puts the entire operation in trouble. And then Jan, who fights in the resistance, is wounded in a firefight and is arrested…

No matter how many war movies you’ve seen, they almost always manage to touch people. We must never forget the horrors of the Second World War and film is the most penetrating way for later generations to experience what it was like back then. Relatively few bombings can be seen in this film; most of the bloodshed is that of the animals, but that doesn’t make it any less bad. It just emphasizes how trivial wars are, that people and even animals that have nothing to do with them are unceremoniously shot. In that sense ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ shows the war through a different lens than we are used to. Incidentally, that limited number of horrific scenes has no consequences for the impact of the film, because the story certainly comes across. This is mainly thanks to Jessica Chastain, a top actress who can actually play anything. You have to look through her ostentatious accent (all Polish characters speak English with an Eastern bloc sauce, all Germans just speak English…?), but behind it lies a warm, honest performance and she really knows how to make Antonina the special woman. she must have been. Heldenbergh and Brühl hold their own in her shadow effortlessly.

While the story is based on true facts, director Niki Caro and writer Angela Workman have gone a bit overboard in believability here and there (particularly towards the end), but otherwise this heart-and-souled war drama holds its own.