Chastain is wild about roles of strength
IT’S no shock Jessica Chastain’s latest character is a feminist hero.
In “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” the historical drama out Friday, Antonina Zabinski saves the lives of hundreds of Jewish people by sheltering them in her Warsaw zoo during WWII. It’s a meaty role that shows something rare in American-made Holocaust films — a hero who doesn’t engage in violence.
As an actor, Chastain’s a bit of a feminist hero herself. Her roles in “Tree of Life,” “Interstellar” and “A Most Violent Year” showed that wives, mothers and daughters in maledominant films can be dynamic, even immense, despite the kind of stereotypical fare often seen in Hollywood. She’s spoken often about feminism, but it’s her creative work that has offered an urgent need to be more imaginative — and equitable — in the kinds of stories told onscreen.
“I don’t think in terms of feminism. Because I’m a feminist. So everything
Tale of ‘Zookeeper’s Wife’ drawn from the journals of a courageous woman.
I do is from a feminist point of view,” she says over the phone. “I’m not even conscious of it. It is who I am. When I’m choosing a character I’m drawn to women pushing against their expected role.”
Ever since seemingly coming out of nowhere in 2011, which saw the release of “The Tree of Life,” “The Help” and “Take Shelter,” Chastain has shown off her acting chops by playing women with deep, complicated stories. She worried that “The Tree of Life” would lead her to be typecast as the angelic mother, so she sought nearly opposite archetypes in “A Most Violent Year” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” directed by Niki Caro, is yet another step into the original.
“Antonina is feminine and strong and courageous. She is many things,” Chastain says of the character.
“Women can actually be more than what society expects them to be and to do.”
Zabinski begins the film as just that, the wife of a prominent zoologist and owner of the Warsaw Zoo. But the story, based on Zabinski’s journals kept during wartime, sees a housewife who defers to her husband to rise up to the occasion of heroism.
“Antonina is afraid to step out of her husband’s shadow. As she gains more responsibility, she’s doing it all alone,” Chastain says. “At the end of the film, her husband meets her as an equal, instead of one person making the decisions. I found that to be inspiring.”
You can see Chastain’s Zabinski faced against impossible decisions, as a high-ranking Nazi (played by Daniel Brühl) makes advances toward her. When she accepts those flirtations, and when her husband catches them in the act, Zabinski and her husband meet face-to-face in a battle of what it means to be a hero.
“She has this man touching her, but she’s too fearful to tell him. She’s not sharing it with his husband because she’s protecting him,” Chastain says. “But he’s out there putting children on trains, but he doesn’t tell her when he comes home because he’s protecting her. After that scene is when they make love. When they finally connect. When the secrets stop and they become fully open.”
Put another way — the stereotypical male heroism often shown in war films now sees an equal, with a fierce and loving zookeeper’s wife. But it’s not lost on Chastain that this kind of parity in perspective is hardly seen.
“It’s strange having people telling me this is the first movie they’ve really ever seen made in the U.S. about women in the Holocaust,” she says. “You realize, oh that’s because there haven’t been that diversity in storytelling.”
She adds: “When you look at those Holocaust films, yes they’ve been from a male point of view because they’ve been male directors and they’ve been male protagonists. I don’t think filmmaking is gender-specific. Women can direct action films, just as men can direct emotional romances. I’ve been lucky to work with two great directors, in Niki Caro and Kathryn Bigelow.”