The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017)
Review of The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017), directed by Niki Caro
I’ve been on this strange history kick lately, I think it’s because Netflix added all of these new historical documentaries on the most random subjects, like the history of pirates and samurais. I kickstarted my renewed interest in World War II watching a documentary featuring some of the survivors of the Holocaust returning to Auschwitz for the first time since they were children prisoners there. That got the tears leaking, and so now when I stumbled upon The Zookeeper’s Wife, I pressed play immediately. Ever since starting my little routine of watching one movie a day, I’ve been uncovering some interesting films.
The Zookeeper’s Wife is one of them. It is inspired by the owners of the Warsaw Zoo, whose story this is revolving around. When Poland was seized by the Germans in WWII, this couple who owned the zoo took in Polish Jews and actually hid them in the empty cages the animals once lived in. A truly remarkable story, one I didn’t know anything about until watching this film.
I’ve said a lot already, so let’s just jump into this review, shall we?
Content
As mentioned before, this film is based off of a true story. Quite of the few characters depicted in the film were very real people, such as the main couple, the Nazi zoo head, and the children’s writer who owns an orphanage of Jewish children. These people once existed in the same plan that we existed in, so I imagine there has to be a particular care when portraying them.
There’s a lot of animal cruelty depicted towards the beginning of this film, so if you’re not into watch zoo animals be sorted and deemed unwanted or wanted and having to watch the unwanted ones be shot, then this part of the film is not for you. It’s really sad, I was a little disturbed at this, but I see why it was chosen to be included in the film. It demonizes the Nazis even more in the viewer’s mind, because here are real humans shooting animals.
Jessica Chastain is the heroine of this movie and she does a great job in the role. We see her cuddling with animals, rescuing Jews (who, by the way, are given no character development whatsoever) and hiding them within the zoo, and avoiding this Nazi man (the actor always get cast as a Nazi in films, which is an interesting observation I picked up on as soon as I saw him) who’s lusting for her hard. This is the vast majority of the film.
While I do enjoy the focus on the female character, the wife, I just don’t think her story does this overarching narrative justice. It’s not feminist or empowering when she has to sell herself to man in order to get the job done. I understand how it represents you got to do what it takes to survive, but her husband is out here in the underground resistance and gets arrested by the Nazis. I imagine a diverging narrative between the two would’ve been more entertaining to watch rather than focusing the last half of the film completely on the wife.
Overall Thoughts
I think is a good film if you want to learn a bit more about the Holocaust in Poland, specifically this story. I don’t think it makes as good as a movie as the producers thought it would be, since it’s kind of lacking in the cinematic department and the writing is just okay. The characters outside of the mother tend to feel static and fall into archetypes, while the plot itself just fades in and out. Could’ve used more tension and whatnot. A solid 1/5 from me.
