The Zookeeper’s Wife

             It took me two tries to watch The Zookeeper’s Wife.  That’s because the first disc I got was so scratched up I couldn’t watch it.  Thankfully, the second disc was in much better condition, because I would have hated to have missed such a great film.          

                Based upon a true story, The Zookeeper’s Wife starts just before the Second World War.  The young Zabinski family runs the Warsaw Zoo in Poland, with Dr. Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh) serving as the zoo director.  While everyone in the family and staff helps care for the animals, it is Antonina (Jessica Chastain), Jan’s wife, who has a special connection with them.  The animals follow Antonina around the zoo, and she is the one who can calm them down when they are in distress.  For Antonina, the animals are part of the family.  Which is why it is even more distressing that nearly all of the animals are either sent to Berlin or killed when the war breaks out.  Losing any of her animals is devastating for Antonina, but she agrees that having them sent to Berlin is much better than having harm come to them.

                Losing the animals isn’t the only thing that happens, though.  Because once the animals have been moved, the Germans take over the zoo.  Dr. Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl), the man who sent the animals to Berlin, uses the zoo as a lab for his efforts in bringing back extinct animals.  One possible reason for using this zoo as the lab location is because he is in love with Antonina, a situation that makes her uncomfortable.  However, no matter how uncomfortable Antonina is, she must appear at ease whenever Heck is around.  If she doesn’t, the secret she and her family are keeping may become revealed.

                The secret Antonia and her family are keeping is a dangerous one, and they could be killed if it is ever found out.  That’s because what Antonina is keeping secret is that she and her family are hiding Jews in their house located at the zoo.  Once the animals were taken away, Jan and Antonina decided to convince the Germans to let them use the zoo land to become pig farmers.  In order to get enough food for the pigs, Jan drives into the Jewish ghetto and takes their garbage.  What the Germans don’t know is that hidden amongst the garbage are Jews the Zabinskis are helping to escape.  Amongst the people they are trying to save is a young girl, Urszula (Shira Haas).  She was sexually assaulted by a group of soldiers, and while she was not part of the original plan to bring back to the zoo, Jan does not feel he can leave her behind.  He sees Urszula traumatized after the assault and stows her away in his truck to get her to safety.  When they arrive at the zoo, Urszula refuses to speak.  It is only with time, Antonina’s love and patience, and a bunny, that Urszula ever starts to come around.

                Over and over Jan and Antonina rescue Jews right under the Germans’ noses.  When Jan is taken captive for being part of the resistance, all the care for those hiding in their home falls to Antonina.  Determined to carry on what she and her husband started, Antonina does whatever she can to protect the people under her care, all while trying to find out what happened to her husband.

                While The Zookeeper’s Wife would be an incredible story if it were fiction, it is even more powerful since these events actually happened in real life.  The risks Jan and Antonina took to save so many people were absolutely incredible, and I loved watching nearly every moment.

                I say nearly because I didn’t like when Jan was so tough and unfair to Antonina.  Now, I don’t know if the conflict was created for the film or not, but either way, I really wish Jan had listened to Antonina when it came to her relationship with Heck.  Instead of asking Antonina what was going on between her and Heck when he saw them together, Jan would get mad and accuse Antonina of things she hadn’t done.  Had Jan simply spoken to Antonina about what was going on, and listened to how she truly felt about Heck, things would have been much smoother between them.

                Despite this conflict, Jan and Antonina continued to work together and they were able to save hundreds of people who would have otherwise died.  This would be a great detail in a fiction work.  Knowing this is fact based off of true events, makes it even better.