Perhaps he is right, but Heck callously betrays his own motives when he shoots a bald eagle as it is about to fly away, then commands one of the soldiers to have it stuffed and mounted in his office. With winter approaching, Heck instructs the German soldiers to shoot the remaining animals, who he claims will not survive the coming months. Brühl is excellent as the chilly Heck, who adopts a sheen of civility that barely conceals a darker core whenever he visits the zoo. Once an acquaintance of the Zabinskis, he takes command of the zoo following the occupation (Jan refers to him as "Hitler's zoologist"). Into all the chaos arrives Lutz Heck ( Daniel Brühl of " Inglourious Basterds" fame). A bloodied polar bear lies dead in a demolished habitat as detached zebra limbs are dragged into a burial pit by Antonia and Jan. Bombs rain down on the zoo, killing many of the animals in a heartrending scene that owes more than a little to Emir Kusturica's "Underground" (1995). The film opens in 1939, and within a few months the German blitzkrieg rolls into Warsaw.
The movie's early minutes delight in the majesty of the creatures-tigers, bison, and elephants all look admirably noble, even though the size and design of their cages would not pass muster in a contemporary zoo. Antonia always seems to have an adorable bunny in her arms as she goes around caring for the animals.
Lion cubs sleep with Ryszard at night, and he keeps a pet skunk around. The Zabinskis live amongst the animals, welcoming them into their house on the zoo grounds. Jessica Chastain stars as the aforementioned Antonia, who runs a zoo in Warsaw, Poland, with her husband Jan (Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh) and their son Ryszard. As to what drew me, I guess I was really compelled by the idea of a different kind of Holocaust movie." Antonia Zabinski's story had kind of fallen through the seams of history and I was amazed when I read the script to learn that it was a true story. "In fact, that was part of the attraction to it. "I had not read 'The Zookeeper's Wife' before I was approached," said Caro in a conference call before the film's release. Her current film was based on the nonfiction book by Diane Ackerman, which was originally unfamiliar to Caro. "The Zookeeper's Wife" is directed by Niki Caro, a filmmaker from New Zealand who first gained fame with "Whale Rider" in 2002, before moving on to make movies in the U.S. For the most part, it maintains a steady footing. It is onto that fraught terrain that " The Zookeeper's Wife" tentatively treads. After Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," the Holocaust films that followed tried to adopt its brutality, leading to an endless parade of sorrows and inhumanity. The earliest attempts to portray Nazi atrocities were impotent documents that pandered to the sensibilities of those who had been shielded from the horrors of WWII.
#MOVIE REVIEW ON THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE GENERATOR#
The prospect of a new film about the Holocaust is a reliable generator of groans among audiences.
0 kommentar(er)
