Thursday, July 20, 2017

In 1993 a movie about the world war II Holocaust, change the completely the way that viewers see this kind of films. Schindler’s List is one of Steven Spielberg masterpiece and tells the story of Oskar Schindler a german owner of a factory, also member of the of the Nazi Party, responsible of saving the lives of 1200 Jews during the holocaust. Since then Hollywood have tried to repeat the model by digging into the most particular stories about jews been saved by personalities during World War II.

The last installment is the the film “The Zookeepers Wife” directed by Niki Caro and starring Jessica Chastain as Antonina Żabińska. As the owner with her husband Jan (Johan Hedenbergh) of a Zoo in Warsaw during World War II. They witness how the Nazi regime arrived to Poland, displacing jews, invading the city and also killing some of the animals of the zoo, but some German scientist decided to take some animals for experimentation.

Jan and Antonia decided to close the zoo, but comes with a plan to start a animal breeding program at the zoo in order to remain there, using pigs to provide food for the occupying forces. This is just a plan to use the pigs food transport to help jews to escape from the Gettho.

Niki Caro director of the beautiful film “The Whale Ryder” presents the audience a very beautiful story. While you watching the movie, you are always captivated by Jessica Chastain beauty and amazing performance, but fell flat when the story and the direction make the film unemotional about simple happenings, like the horrific killing of animals at the zoo, the struggle of Jan and Antonia as a marriage, trying to raise their kids, but also you’r not able to connect entirely with all the characters, specially the families rescued by the Żabińska family. Sometimes you get lost try to understand why some scenes are over the top, instead of create a visual and tense drama, about a family who saved 300 jews at the Warsaw zoo. To me the biggest waste is Daniel Brühl as Lutz Heck as Hitler Zooologist, his performance is boring and exaggerated.

“The Zookeepers Wife” is a film that could be a better movie, a movie story and a powerful story of another important saviors during the World War II holocaust.

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