"The
Zookeeper's Wife" is a strong story. The 2017 film adaptation suffers from
a weak script and direction that do not serve the story. Jessica Chastain gives
a superb, understated performance as Antonina Zabinska, a real person. Antonina
was a gifted zookeeper – why call her "wife"? – who helped save 300
Jews in Warsaw, Poland, during the Nazi occupation. She and her husband Jan
were part of the Polish Underground and Armia Krajowa, or Home Army. The film
is worth seeing to see their story, but it's just an okay film, not the great
one it could have been.
Jessica
Chastain is externally very beautiful and fragile-appearing. In her understated
performance, she plays a resourceful, animal-loving Polish lady to perfection. She's
the center of the film. All of the other characters are in the shadow of
Chastain's central light.
Lutz
Heck had the Nazi-goal of reviving extinct species like the aurochs and the
tarpan – primitive cattle and horses. Heck participated in the looting of the
Warsaw Zoo. He selected which animals he wanted shipped back to his own Berlin
zoo. Heck also lusted after Antonina. She had to do a careful dance of
manipulation of Heck to protect her activity saving Jews. Heck is played by
Daniel Bruhl, who also played a lovelorn Nazi in "Inglorious Bastards."
Czech
playwright Arnost Goldflam appears as Janusz Korczak, the author, broadcaster, children's
rights advocate, physician, and overseer of an orphanage. Korczak famously
stayed with his orphans rather than accept any of the many offers he received
to be smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto. The real Janusz Korczak was a slim
man; Goldflam is portly. His appearance not only doesn't mesh with the real
Korczak. Goldflam doesn't look like someone who'd been living under starvation
conditions forced by the Nazis for the past three years. The scenes with
Korczak and his orphans did make me cry, but they seem like a detour from the
film's main narrative.
One
problem the film faced: we have all seen Holocaust movies. Sad but true, during
much of this film I was simply disinterested, waiting for it to show me something
I had not seen in another film, to tell me something I had not yet heard. The
film opens with Antonina happily taking care of her lion cubs, pregnant
elephant, devoted young camel, and her son's pet skunk. We all know what will
happen next: Nazi planes will bomb; Jews will begin to wear armbands. Brutality
will increase and then there will be mass transports on trains.
Perhaps
the film could have opened in media res, during the Nazi bombardment, and
focused more closely on Antonina's interior life. The film tosses away
references to her tragic history. Her parents were murdered by the Soviets and
she had had to live on the run. Why not weave those facts into a richer
portrait of the central character?
Poles
who helped Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland had to scrounge food for their wards while
they, the Poles, lived under forced starvation conditions. They also had to
dispose of human waste without drawing any attention to themselves. The film
never explores how the Zabinskis managed these considerable feats.
The
film falls into a historically revisionist trap when it implies that Nazis were
interested only in Jews, and Polish Catholics were allowed to live out the war
in beautiful clothing. Nazis served Poles brandy in snifters and politely
debated their actions. The film also implies that Nazi policies were in effect
in Poland before the war began. Antonina and her son Ryszard see Jewish porters
carrying heavy loads in Warsaw's market. Antonina makes a comment about how
"they" are mistreating Jews. The scene is simply misleading.
Too,
Nazis murdered and displaced more Polish non-Jews in the early days of the war
than Polish Jews, but the film depicts Nazis as focusing almost exclusively on
persecuting Jews. When the Nazi invasion begins, Jan makes a comment about how
he has nothing against Jews. This is just a dumb thing for him to say. The
bombardment of Warsaw was a thousand times worse than the film suggests. There
are scenes were some herd animals are buried and others are set free in a
forest. Poland was so desperate during the war that those animals would have
more likely been butchered for meat, as happened to horses that fell in
Warsaw's streets. The film just wants to tell a simple-minded, and false, story
about privileged Poles and persecuted Jews. If the film had conveyed the threat
the Germans posed to non-Jewish Poles as well as Jewish ones, the Zabinskis
heroism would have been revealed as even more profound.
Poles
fought much more than the film depicts. Jan Zabinski was a member of the Armia
Krajowa, or Home Army. He taught in the underground university. He sabotaged
trains and built bombs. None of this is shown in the film. Jan comes across as
a hapless victim who can only stand by open-mouthed and watch as his wife
attempts to twist lovelorn Nazi Heck around her sexy finger.
Polish-Jewish
relations during the war were very, very, very complicated. I'm not using too
many "verys." The film depicts Poles helping Jews, but it makes
virtually no mention of Polish anti-Semitism. Not all Poles were heroes. Some
betrayed Jews and their rescuers to the Nazis. In one scene, a Pole witnesses
Antonina help a Jew. The Pole promises Antonina she will not betray her work.
Had this eyewitness betrayed Antonina, the Nazis would have murdered the entire
family, including Ryszard, the young son. These tensions and obstacles are only
hinted at in the film.
Thank you Danusha for this insightful review. I had hoped (in vain, as it turns out) that 'Hollywood' (and those who control the content and slant of its films) would tell a completely true story this time - some hope ... as usual, sadly, it is the 'convenient truths' that have been included. As in that heavily slanted 'Ida' film, there should be a prologue, and probably a post-logue, to this film in the film-languages and subtitles.
ReplyDeleteIt's also a form of revisionism to refer to the Germans as Nazis. I was relieved that the perpetrators were finally identified although not until almost at the end of this blog. Poland was invaded by a country, not a political party. The practice of hiding the Germans behind this nebulous term has resulted in an alarming increase in phrases such as Nazi Poland, Polish Nazis, Polish SS, Poland's Nazi governor, and other similar distortions. It behooves us, as Poles, to make it clear that Poland was invaded, occupied, terrorized and destroyed by Germans, not just members of a party which comprised about 10% of the Germans population. My father, an AK veteran, has never, ever referred to them as Nazis.
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