The Zookeeper's Wife

Based on Diane Ackerman's titular haunting 2007 nonfiction book, The Zookeeper's Wife begins on a beautiful day in 1939 at Poland's Warsaw Zoo, where Antonina Zabinska (Jessica Chastain) helps her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) tend the animals, resuscitating a newborn elephant calf who cannot breathe. Suddenly, German aircraft appear overhead and bombs reign down, killing many of the terrified beasts, while others escape to roam the city's streets. Led by Berlin's chief zoologist—sinister Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl)—the Nazis commandeer the grounds, saving only “prize specimens” for selective breeding, while savagely slaughtering the rest. Meanwhile, within the city, the Jewish population is herded into a ghetto, locked behind barbed wire to starve or, later, be loaded onto boxcars and sent to concentration camps. Appalled at the brutality, Antonina and Jan hatch a defiant plan: since the German soldiers love pork, they'll turn the zoo into a pig farm, feeding the animals the Jews' garbage. While Antonina cares for their dwindling menagerie, Jan drives his truck into the ghetto, hiding Jews by covering them with refuse and smuggling them into his human sanctuary until the Resistance is able to transport them to safety. While Chastain radiates beatific compassion, Angela Workman's perfunctory script is a flaccid, almost antiseptic adaption, although the film is sensitively helmed by New Zealand director Niki Caro (Whale Rider). A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (7 min.), deleted scenes (4 min.), and a segment on the real “The Żabińska Family” (4 min.). Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a somewhat disappointing adaptation.] (S. Granger)