The title role is played by Jessica Chastain she is Antonina Zabinski, on whose memoirs, notes and diaries the book was based. In a production based on a nonfiction book by Diane Ackerman, a brilliantly specific story has been reduced to conventional drama and synthetic heroics. The moment is memorable but the film is not, despite the richness of its theme-a zookeeper and his wife protecting their remaining animals while saving the lives of hundreds of Warsaw’s Jews. “Wild animals are loose!” a loudspeaker blares wild, yes, though no more so than the Nazi beasts to come. Some animals perish in their cages, others flee in terror onto the streets. In “The Zookeeper’s Wife” it’s the Luftwaffe’s bombing of the Warsaw zoo in September 1939, when Hitler’s forces have just invaded Poland. A single sequence can define the essence of a movie, or hint at what the movie might have been.
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