For a movie about the terrors of World War II, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is strangely devoid of tension.
STARS: 2/5
The film tells the true story of Antonina Zabinski and her husband Jan who rescued nearly 300 Jewish people from the ghetto of Warsaw, Poland from 1939 to 1944. The couple sheltered the refugees in their abandoned zoo. However, for a film about the Holocaust, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is strangely tame and almost family friendly.
The film is a tender, overly-sanitized adaptation of the 2007 non-fiction best seller by Diane Ackerman. The most desperate parts of the film occur within the first 30 minutes, as bombs drop on the zoo and kill a majority of the animals.
Not to say that the cruelty of the Nazis was solely targeted at Jewish people, but it seems strange that the most emotional points of a WWII film come from the death of zebras. The film glosses over the barbaric treatment the Jewish people endured at the hands of the Nazis.
After the invasion of Poland, Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh) comes up with the idea to convert the zoo into a pig farm to produce food for the German soldiers. His real intention, however, is to secretly transport people hidden in the garbage used to feed the pigs from the ghetto to the zoo.
Despite the horrible conditions the refugees endured to get to safety, none of them look any worse for the wear when they emerge from the trash. This portrayal made their suffering seem false and that their rescue was easy.
Another subplot to the film is Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck’s (Daniel Bruhl) fascination with Antonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain). Bruhl’s Heck is a charming, altogether tame Nazi for most of the film and Antonina must indulge his flirtations to hide the family’s secrets — namely the Jewish people living in their basement.
When it comes down to it, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is not really about a zoo, not really about Antonina and not really about the Holocaust. It stands as nothing more than a retelling of a list of events, adding no heart or emotional draw to a story that should be chock-full of both.
