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Ashdoc's Movie Review---The Zookeeper's Wife

ashdoc

Movie Critic
SPNer
Jul 19, 2011
391
219
49
1939---the nazi panzers are going to roll over Europe and ignite the second world war . Poland is going to be the next victim of nazi aggression ( Czechoslovakia was the first ) . One of the biggest zoos in Europe is the zoo of Warsaw , the capital of Poland . It's zookeeper is Jan Zabinski , who is played by Johan Heldenbergh . But the movie's main focus is his lovely wife Antonina , played by Jessica Chastain.

The movie begins with Antonina waking up in an shining figure hugging nightie , and considering her looks and figure , you want more of her to be shown . And she does further entice you by wearing enticing clothes all through the movie---lacy and backless and having put on enticing make up . Her scenes with her nude thighs wrapped around the thighs of her husband and again around her admirer's thighs give you the hots .

Of course , the complaint can be made that this beauty fest takes away from the main theme of the movie---the holocaust . But this is not exactly a holocaust movie anyway . It is not meant to show how jews were murdered by nazis during the world war . It is meant to show how this brave lady saved the quite a number jews from the nazi killing machine with help from her husband . It is not meant to take us to view a concentration camp and all it's horrors .

Another focus of the movie is the animals of the zoo and their fate . It has quite a few scenes of Antonina caring for animals and fondling the more smaller among them , to the point where I was lusting to be in place of the ones she was fondling
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....she was holding it quite close to her breasts
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To anyone who is sore that this once again takes away focus from the holocaust , let me remind that the name of the movie is 'The zookeeper's wife' and she is the centrepiece of the film ; the jews she saves are not the centre of the film .

In fact we are not introduced to the names of some of the jews and about their background stories . But the heroine and her husband do take enormous risk in hiding jews and smuggling them out and feeding them out of the rations allotted to them . But the enormity of the risk they take is not properly shown in the film ; seeing the film , their task seems easier than it actually was . They were at the risk of being killed ( or worse ) by the nazis if found out , but somehow you don't 'feel' the risk in the movie . Only at the end when their son is about to be shot dead as punishment for the hiding jews does the enormity of what the couple were doing strike you fully .

Such a beautiful woman is bound to use her beauty to survive at a time when only six percent of Warsaw's population managed to survive the war . She does so by winning the attention of Hitler's chief zoologist ( Lutz Heck played by Daniel Bruhl ) and luring him with her charms to make him accept the idea of making the zoo a farm for breeding pigs for food for the war effort , which she and her husband will run . But this strategy carries it's own price as Heck demands sexual favours with increasing boldness as the movie progresses . It is a measure of the heroine's character that she not only ensures her own survival but also that of jews taking grave risk on herself and her family .

The movie does have a sentimental and 'happy' ending , if such a sordid tale set in a city and nation which is in ruins could have one . That is because her own family and most of the jews the heroine tried to save survived the war . And that was the triumph of the heroine---worthy of making a movie over . One thing the film does not show ( but I forgive the director for that ) is that after the war majority of Polish christians refused to take back the jews who tried to come back to Poland .

The music of the movie is sweet , the colours and photography are so good---they go a long way in making the movie worth watching . Acting by Jessica Chastain is superb , of being strong and looking vulnerable in the appropriate situations . Daniel Bruhl plays the mean nazi villain , but even his cruelty is tempered ; this being a major flaw of the film , which does not show the full extent of nazi barbarity .

Verdict---Good .

Three stars .
 

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