![]() ![]() We know how the story of the Holocaust goes. Second: We all know how to story of the Warsaw Ghetto ends. It’s absolutely tragic and heartbreaking. The animals that survive the bombing and don’t get sent to Berlin are culled. It’s supposed to be – no one is pretending that they aren’t innocent victims, but watching a polar bear get bombed wasn’t high on my list of things to see. Okay, so while I thought this was a well done movie, and while I think the message of “do the right thing- you know what that is” is important, and while I, as ever, applaud movies by and about women, I feel like I have to offer up a bunch of caveats.įirst: most of the animals at the zoo don’t survive. He’s a Nazi through and through, and has this thing for Antonina and it’s pretty gross. ![]() The primary antagonist is Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl), Hitler’s chief zoologist who, after the zoo is bombed during the invasion of Poland, generously offers to take the prize specimens to Berlin (“for safekeeping, I’ll totally return them after the war!”) and then wants to use the bison to resurrect an extinct species (no, I don’t understand how he planned to pull that off, but it’s a thing the historical Heck tried to do). Then they begin smuggling people out of the Ghetto and hiding them in the animal pens, with the help of many other people. ![]() They begin hiding people when their Jewish best friends ask them to store a few prized possessions (it’s an insect collection) and they agree that they could hide one of them. Her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) also is good at logistics, and has a strong sense of “you do what’s right, and deal with the consequences as they come.” They have a young son who grows up with lion cubs in his bedroom, and then people hidden in his basement, and while there’s some typical rebellion, he understands that this is much bigger than any adolescent frustrations he has. This is a handy skill to have when running a zoo, and it’s invaluable when one is part of the Polish Resistance and hiding Jewish people in the basement. Jessica Chastain plays Antonina, a woman with a remarkable affinity for animals, and only slightly less affinity for managing logistics under pressure. It’s directed by Niki Caro, who you may remember as the director of Whale Rider, and written by Angela Workman. The epilogue tells us that only two out of the over 300 were found and killed- the rest survived the war. During the war, the vast majority of the animals were killed or sent to Germany, and they raised pigs….and also sheltered over 300 Jewish people that were smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety. The Zookeeper’s Wife is about Antonina Żabiński and her husband Jan, who ran the Warsaw Zoo up to WWII. There’s also a young girl who gets raped, so if you want to tap out right here, I don’t blame you. And it’s about an occupied city in wartime. It’s a movie about the Holocaust, so that’s one layer, but it’s also about a zoo in wartime. I’m gonna be straight up with you here: this is a difficult watch. TW for rape, animal harm, and the general shitbaggery of Nazi occupation of Poland during WWII. ![]()
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