Jessica Chastain starrer "The Zookeeper's Wife" invokes mixed feelings. The performances are uniformly first-rate. Daniel Bruhl, Belgian star Johan Helderbergh and Jessica Chastain occupy the maximum screen- time and they put in their best to sustain viewer attention.
The aesthetics are worth a mention too; the film looks rich and convincing in terms of production values. The brunt of WW II isn't the crux of the film, hence there ain't much scope for digging into full-fledged battle scenes. The story revolves around a couple who run a zoo in Warsaw around the time of WW II, and use the premises to save nearly 300 Jews during the invasion of Poland by German forces.
If you watch the film without reading the synopsis or watching the trailer, you are going to get a different feeling altogether. This is neither a movie that showcases its unbounded love for the world of animals nor a well-developed war movie. It is somewhere in between. While the virtues it professes are invariably good, director Niki Caro is forced to employ certain clichés to make the overall viewing experience better. The film's opening sequence is solid. But it would have certainly helped knowing more about the POWs since the movie spends a fair amount of time detailing their rescue. Once the couple gets their act going, there is an obvious aimlessness in the screenplay. The method of rescue is the same all throughout; the nail-biter moments are highly lacking. The accents probably add to the authenticity but are at times, a pain to keep listening to.
The frequent jump in chronology sans noteworthy moments makes the film look slightly jaded on the whole. The climax can be predicted from a mile away. A crowdpleaser sans tear-jerking, one tends to feel more positive about the fact that the saga has finally comes to a close rather than getting exhilarated seeing the couple reunite. Diane Ackerman's book could have looked/felt positively different in the hands of another seasoned director. In it's current state, the film is still a fairly decent watch.
The aesthetics are worth a mention too; the film looks rich and convincing in terms of production values. The brunt of WW II isn't the crux of the film, hence there ain't much scope for digging into full-fledged battle scenes. The story revolves around a couple who run a zoo in Warsaw around the time of WW II, and use the premises to save nearly 300 Jews during the invasion of Poland by German forces.
If you watch the film without reading the synopsis or watching the trailer, you are going to get a different feeling altogether. This is neither a movie that showcases its unbounded love for the world of animals nor a well-developed war movie. It is somewhere in between. While the virtues it professes are invariably good, director Niki Caro is forced to employ certain clichés to make the overall viewing experience better. The film's opening sequence is solid. But it would have certainly helped knowing more about the POWs since the movie spends a fair amount of time detailing their rescue. Once the couple gets their act going, there is an obvious aimlessness in the screenplay. The method of rescue is the same all throughout; the nail-biter moments are highly lacking. The accents probably add to the authenticity but are at times, a pain to keep listening to.
The frequent jump in chronology sans noteworthy moments makes the film look slightly jaded on the whole. The climax can be predicted from a mile away. A crowdpleaser sans tear-jerking, one tends to feel more positive about the fact that the saga has finally comes to a close rather than getting exhilarated seeing the couple reunite. Diane Ackerman's book could have looked/felt positively different in the hands of another seasoned director. In it's current state, the film is still a fairly decent watch.