Review of The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) by Kristofer H — 01 Apr 2017

Proper Perspective: This felt like it was going to be a familiar movie about a familiar period of time, World War II, and while it had some moments of the prototypical war movie stories, but it found a way to be a unique story at the same time. Let's talk about The Zookeeper's Wife...

Official Synopsis: The Zookeeper's Wife tells the account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the German invasion.

Plot: A married couple who own the Warsaw Zoo find themselves in a unique position to take advantage of a relationship with the Hitler Regime to keep their zoo open, take Jews out of the Ghetto, and save as many as possible.

Take: This movie is very familiar in a lot of ways. It is Schindler's List in a zoo. It is a more personal story without all of the violence of other war movies.

Initially this movie was following the cookie cutter model of a movie about good people during the Hitler Regime. Every good character was heightened to being a deity and all of the Nazis had to do something extra awful to remind you they are bad. At the beginning of the movie, Antonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain) literally leaves a dinner party where people are treating her poorly to save a newborn elephant's life, then the mean party guests gave her an actual standing ovation.

If you already hated Nazis, you will hate them more as the kill cute animals in cold blood right in front of your face. Bad guys are BAD and good guys are GOOD.

Those are script issues. The movie has a Save the Cat script and is very generic. The direction makes up for it to a degree and I enjoyed the way it was shot and presented.

The side characters were all very good with Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh) as the Zookeeper, Lutz Heck (Daniel Bruhl) as the leader of the Nazi team in the zoo, and Jerzyk (Michael McElhatton) as the assistant to the zoo itself. All of the actors and performances were good balancing the journey of Antonina.

There was a lot of things I wanted to see more of like the wink deal where Antonina was going to lead on Lutz romantically to keep him distracted from what was going on right under his nose. Also, the events leading to Jan going from just the person transporting the Jews from the Ghetto to the Zoo to becoming a leader of the resistance efforts in Warsaw. This was a fascinating story told well by a good director, but written in a safe generic way by a studio.

Semi-Spoiler: There is a scene where the Jews are being led into a train to be "transported." Jan and another character seem to understand that this is not a good train ride and they each lift up unassuming kids, very young kids, into the train. I almost threw up it was so tough to watch with the hindsight that we have today.

Recommendation: Overall this is not a World War II movie that changes the game or shows us something new, but it is a unique story, well-acted, well directed, and has a few moments that will make us reflect on our own humanity. Good flick, go check it out...

Can we get Daniel Bruhl out of being exclusively the "evil foreign character" that is a foil for the pretty good guys? Please? Anyone? Okay thanks.