'The Zookeeper’s Wife' review: A mediocre film, with grand ambition

'The Zookeeper’s Wife', based on the eponymous book by Diane Ackerman, feels less like a film centred around the Holocaust and more about animals, which is a serious case of the plot being lost in translation.

The protagonist Antonina Zÿabinski is played by the captivating Jessica Chastain, who is the only character of the film that the makers get invested in and ultimately the viewers really get an insight into. Antonina and her husband Jan (Heldenbergh) are a Polish couple who, during the Holocaust, save around 300 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto and give them sanctuary in their zoo.

Lutz Heck (Brühl) is a Nazi zoologist who begins as an ally to the Zÿabinskis, but soon reveals his sinister side. Antonina, while battling an increasingly threatening Heck, saves the Jews, stands for what is right and is a ray of kindness and compassion amid Nazi cruelty.




There is drama and a play on the fragile and dynamic understanding of humanity, but these scenes are chiefly during Antonina’s interaction with the animals under her watch, who get more screen time than the Jews the couple save. While we get some understanding of the bond the Zÿabinskis share with their animal charges, there is never an insight and subsequently no connection with the humans. The stories of the Jews, that the couple save remain untold. The anonymity of the characters makes the more emotionally fraught scenes involving Nazi invasion of Poland seem sans apprehension and suspense.

Chastain gives a layered and vulnerable performance, but the film fails to rise up to standard of other Holocaust-centred films such as 'Schindler’s List'. The Zookeeper’s Wife stays a mediocre film, but with grand ambition.