Most of the violence in The Zookeeper’s Wife takes place off-screen. In addition to shots of Varsovians evacuating the capital, these scenes inevitably evoke more recent footage of Aleppo. The scenes showing the 1939 blitzkrieg in Warsaw and the complete destruction of the city in 1944 are truly harrowing. Flemish actor Johan Heldenbergh is excellent as Jan, and this could be his international breakout.īeautifully shot and graced by a lovely score by Harry Gregson-Williams, The Zookeeper’s Wife is a deeply moving film.
Doolittle, and Jessica Chastain’s love for animals is conveyed well in her numerous scenes with all creatures great and small, from elephants to rabbits. Antonina Żabińska was truly something of a Dr. Chastain is fine as Antonina, and based on her interviews it is clear that the titular zookeeper’s wife is her hero, but this role is not necessarily her best and her accent sounds a bit phony and more Russian than Polish. In Niki Caro’s latest film, Antonina Żabińska is played by Jessica Chastain, also the executive producer. In the interwar period, Jan Żabiński again headed the Warsaw Zoo, although he eventually fell out of favor with Poland’s new communist elites because of his service in the Home Army and during the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1921. After being wounded during the Warsaw Uprising, Żabiński was sent to a POW camp in Germany. Jan Żabiński headed a platoon in the Home Army, the main grouping of Poland’s anti-Nazi, anti-communist wartime resistance. Some of these “guests” were hidden in the zoo until they found safe houses elsewhere, while others stayed with the Żabińskis for years. During the German occupation of Warsaw, the Żabińskis masterfully hid 300 Jews (all but two of whom survived the war) and dozens of members of the Polish underground in the basement of their villa and in emptied zoo cages (surprisingly, the Żabińskis’ aid to Polish partisans is omitted in this otherwise historically accurate film). For these reasons, it is worth seeing.īased on Diane Ackerman’s book of the same title, The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the true story of Jan Żabiński, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife Antonina.
The true story of Jan and Antonina Żabiński is still relevant today, giving examples of moral courage amidst war and genocide that the world needs again. It sheds light on the heroic, yet unsung Polish resistance during World War II, and it movingly shows how animals awaken our humanity. While Nazi Germany’s premeditated murder of six million Jews has been the subject of more films than perhaps any other historical event, Niki Caro’s The Zookeeper’s Wife is not a typical Holocaust movie.
0 kommentar(er)
