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The Zookeeper’s Wife
T is clearly Jessica Chastain’s time to dominate the big screen. In The Zookeeper’s Wife, she proves again that she can boost what could have been a rather meh movie into something watchable.
The 2007 bestselling book of the same name was based on diaries that a Polish couple, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, wrote when they ran the Warsaw Zoo during World War 2.
Chastain plays Antonina Zabinski, an animal whisperer. The film opens in a magical setting where she feeds the animals, smiles at her husband as they rake hay, takes her son to school. She impresses the new owner of the zoo, Lutz Heck (Daniel Brühl), by saving a newborn elephant struggling to breathe.
But then war breaks out, the zoo is bombed, lions and tigers are roaming the streets, and Heck (who has become Hitler’s chief zoologist) takes the best animals for private collections maintained by him and his Nazi pals.
Antonina and Jan hide one of their best friends in their nowempty zoo, to avoid her being sent to the ghetto.
They realise they can help others, so they convince Heck that the zoo could be put to use raising pigs to feed the troops.
Soon they are smuggling in people from the ghetto in the bins of garbage that they are meant to be collecting to feed the pigs.
About 300 people were hidden in the zoo’s underground cages and tunnels and thereby saved from the concentration camps.
It’s a worthy film with a worthy story and a worthy heroine. — @Jenniferdplatt
Chastain shines as a woman who loves humans and animals. By
‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ is in cinemas on March 31
We are giving away 50 double tickets to a complimentary screening of popcorn and cola included. Time: 8pm. Date: Thursday March 30. Venue: Nu Metro Hyde Park, cinema No 1 To enter: SMS the keyword ZOOKEEPER, followed by JHB and your FULL NAME, to the number 39710 (example: ZOOKEEPER – JHB – ISAAC LIBAGA) in Joburg;