Film review: Holocaust heroes in The Zookeeper’s Wife

The film tells the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski who opened Warsaw Zoo on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland.

Jessica Chastain as Antonina Zabinski in The Zookeeper’s Wife. Anne Marie Fox / Focus Features

Director: Niki Caro

Stars: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl

Three stars

The Zookeeper's Wife stars Johan Heldenbergh and Jessica Chastain as Jan and Antonina Zabinski, a young married couple typical in most ways – apart from their collection of exotic animals.

They are the owners of Warsaw Zoo – which they have the misfortune to open in September 1939, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The zoo is bombed and the best surviving specimens are seized by the ruthless Dr Lutz Heck – played by Daniel Brühl – for his zoo in Berlin. Before the war, he assured the Zabinskis he was “a zoologist, not a politician” – then turns up post-invasion in an SS officer’s uniform.

Aside from losing their animals, the Zabinskis do not suffer too badly under the Nazi occupation. As middle-class Poles and with, in Heck, a “friend” in a high place, their lives go on relatively untroubled.

It is, therefore, testament to the couple – the real-life Zabinskis, on whose story the movie is based – that despite their relative safety under Nazi occupation they took it upon themselves to rescue hundreds of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.

The film doesn’t put a number on the lives they saved, although Diane Ackerman’s non-fiction book of the same name, upon which the film is based, estimates it to be about 300.

It's a brave director who takes on a film about real-life heroes saving lives during the Holocaust. Inevitably, your film will be compared with classics such as Schindler's List, Life Is Beautiful, and more recent Oscar winners such as Ida and Son of Saul.

For the most part, Caro rises to the challenge, although the film is a slightly emotionless affair.

The clue is in the title – this is very much Chastain’s film. The people she saves, and even her husband, are barely fleshed out, serving largely as tools to show how remarkable Antonina is. Even as German bombers rain fury down on Warsaw, we barely see the planes or the destruction, only Antonina’s reaction to it.

A little more exploration of her character would have been nice – surely no one, however heroic, is as perfect as Antonina is portrayed?

There is an implication, for example, that she might have been a wealthy Russian refugee who fled the Russian Revolution 20 years earlier. This might have offered a fascinating insight on what drew her to the plight of her charges, but this is never developed.

That is not to take anything away from what is, on the whole, a good movie and an impeccable vehicle for Chastain to showcase her talents. But given the subject matter, a more insightful approach to the issues and characters would have made it even better.