DVD Review: The Zookeeper’s Wife – Salvation sans recrimination

DVD: The Zookeeper’s Wife

Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh

Review made possible by: Times New Media

The setting is the ideal place for a fairy tale with Adam (a camel calf) following the zookeeper’s wife (Jessica Chastain) around as she makes her rounds of the zoo, and two lion cubs languishing on her son’s bed.

However, in 1939 the Warsaw Zoo was not a place of childhood delights.

This movie is based on the non-fiction book by Diane Ackerman using the unpublished diary of Antonina Zabinska which recounts her experiences at the Warsaw Zoo with her husband, Dr. Jan Zabinski who ran a flourishing zoo before the Nazi occupation of Poland.

When their country is invaded by the Nazis, Jan and Antonina are forced to report to the Reich’s newly appointed chief zoologist, Lutz Heck.

With most of the animals killed by the Germans to feed their troops, the couple sees the zoo’s potential as a refugee camp for those forced into the Warsaw Ghetto.

Using his connections in the resistance, Jan is able to smuggle almost 300 people out of the ghetto and get them back to the zoo where Antonina hides and cares for them until they can be sent to safe houses organised by the resistance.

By day these escapees sleep under the house but by night they emerge to have dinner, a little wine and enjoy the semblance of a normal life, if for only a few hours.

This story is beautifully filmed to show not only the harrowing reality of life during WWII, but also to celebrate the resilience of the human soul.

It is a powerful tale told with sensitivity and celebrates these 300 people’s triumph over the Nazis as well as Antonina and Jan’s strength and generosity in putting themselves and their children in danger to help these people.

This is one of those rare instances in which the movie was better than the book, vividly bringing the characters and their struggles to life.