‘Zookeeper’s Wife’ is a riveting, true WWII story

By LINDSEY BAHR

AP Film Writer

In German-occupied Poland during the darkest days of World War II, a zookeeper and his wife managed to save the lives of hundreds of Jewish people, many of whom were detained in the Warsaw Ghetto, by giving them shelter and refuge on the zoo grounds. This extraordinary true story is dramatized rather effectively in director Niki Caro’s “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” based on the nonfiction book by naturalist writer Diane Ackerman.

Despite a romanticized beginning in which our heroine, Antonina (Jessica Chastain), seems to live the most picture perfect life that’s ever existed, Caro keeps the action and emotion real and grounded throughout.

The stage-setting is a necessary evil, but used wisely enough to introduce the characters and set up what will be an ongoing personal conflict that will serve as a sort of microcosm for the war – the friendship with a German zoologist, Lutz (Daniel Bruhl), that turns into an increasingly uneasy alliance when the war starts.

By the time the invasion starts and the zoo is bombed and destroyed, you feel the loss of something that was once just good and pure. It’s distressing to watch the occupying soldiers shoot animals whether out of fear, wartime necessity or just plain evil and a reminder that humans are not the only ones who suffer in war.

But the real power of the story is in what Antonina and her husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), do for the persecuted Jews – risking their lives to stage elaborately planned extractions from the ghetto and provide refuge for those they saved in their own home.

Look past the sepia and the dreary title, “The Zookeeper’s Wife” is both riveting inspiring and comes as a welcome reminder in this time of uncertainty that even in the face of astonishing evil, humanity and goodness also can rise to the occasion.