The Holocaust film has become a genre unto itself, and sadly, there are more than enough stories from that era to continue the trend. Against ever-shifting, polarized political landscapes, the lessons gleaned from the horrors of this very recent past are never not relevant. But too often, many of these biopics fall prey to well-trod norms and conventions. In Niki Caro’s “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” the backdrop of a Warsaw zoo offers a new angle, and features a show-stopping performance from Jessica Chastain as the real-life Antonina Zabinski, but it otherwise follows a familiar path.
Caro, working from script by Angela Workman adapted from Diane Ackerman’s book, smartly places the focus on Antonina. The rest of the plot may go a bit muddy, but when we’re trained on our protagonist, it’s all crystal clear. In an opening sequence, we witness her unique bond with the animals of the zoo, the power she holds over them with her simple approach of open-hearted love and empathy for all. With tenderness and bravery, she calms an elephant and rescues its baby, and those same qualities make her a hero for humans in the face of unspeakable evil.
The story is one we know, of ordinary people choosing to do extraordinary things to preserve a shred of humanity in times of war and human destruction. Antonina and her husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), decide to harbor Jews from the Warsaw ghetto in the basement of their home while their zoo is occupied by Nazi forces. They hide these “guests” in plain sight with a system of signals, transporting them from Jan’s garbage-collecting truck to underground tunnels.
Female view
Caro never quite achieves the razor’s edge suspense that such a scenario engenders, as their ruse is only one sneeze, one bad lie, one snitch away from discovery. That danger is never fully rendered on screen in the way that it could be. The truly powerful moments come from Chastain’s soul-baring performance as a gentle woman who loves enormously, cares diligently, and always does the hard thing when the situation calls for it. She might be a bit too competent for the purposes of cinematic drama.