The Zookeeper’s Wife

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Jessica Chastain gives an extraordinary performance in The Zookeeper’s Wife, based on a true story. I don’t want to give away much of the story, and until I can read the book I won’t know which details were true and which weren’t, but it really is quite a special movie. The Warsaw zoo is destroyed by the German invasion of Poland in 1939, but the zookeeper and his wife made it their mission to provide protection for Jews, hiding frequently from a creep (in the movie’s characterization, at least) named Lutz Heck, a real German zoologist played in the movie by Daniel Bruhl. The movie is filled with emotional tension, and the female director, Niki Caro, really understands how to tell a human drama. She directed McFarland, U.S.A. previously, which I like.In this movie, keeping it PG-13 actually makes it more powerful emotionally than if we saw everything bad we are told about. The real zookeeper’s wife rebuilt the Warsaw zoo even though only about 6% of Warsaw’s population was still there by the end of the war. She and her husband helped save hundreds of Jews during the war. Her story deserved to be told, and Jessica Chastain was a good choice to play her, with a very expressive face and a lot of versatility. Chastain also does well on the simple piano music she has to play in the movie; she learned piano just for playing in this movie. (By the way, when I was visiting the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014, she was the one star I got to see in person, at a red carpet event for A Most Violent Year, and she treated fans nicely.) This movie is really worthwhile and covers the full range of human emotions, thoughtfully and sensitively.-Christopher Schwinger

I loved the movie but not the subject, of course. There are scenes in this movie that are extremely difficult to watch but I forced myself and during one scene when the nazi shot the baby camel, Adam, I actually screamed ” what! What are you doing!!!!?” and I have never shouted out loud in a movie in my entire life. Thankfully, those scenes were short and in the beginning of the movie but later, the scene of the children reaching for someone to lift them on the train to Auschwitz killed me. Even recalling that scene sends me to tears. But, it is necessary to feel that kind of pain so that we can all appreciate just how horrific and evil the holocaust was. Many Jews were shot without any warning- just like the scene where the animals were shot. The director wanted us to feel that shock, that kind of fear and desperation. I thought about how difficult it was for me to watch in a movie and what it must have been like in real life. I can only imagine. I don’t know if I would have had the strength to endure such without losing my mind.
Historically speaking, this is a film everyone should watch. It’s a film about a very painful truth about mankind and how easily very bad things happen to good trusting people when they aren’t questioning authority. Beware, history always repeats because angry evil people seeking power and authority always exist among us.- LizzieW

I only got through about 60% of this because I had forgotten it was one I had paid to rent, rather than just watching on Prime, and my rental expired before I finished watching (in other words, I thought I had all the time in the world to finish it.)Obviously, I can’t review the movie as a whole. That being said, the performances were quite good and the tension level was kept relatively high in that it really captured what must have been the level of stress and uncertainty even for non-Jews at the time (of course, it was 100x worse for the Jewish people, but it was still more than bad enough for the everyone else who wasn’t a true believer in the Nazi mission. I suspect I willl rent it again to finish watching…it was definitely keeping my interest enough that I’d like to see the end, even if it means paying again.However, HOWEVER, I do have one complaint, not necessarily about the film itself, but about the way it is being promoted. It really needs to come with a strong, and unmissable, warning that the movie contains many scenes of animals suffering, in pain, in fear, and dying, sometimes as a result of the deliberate, intentional acts of the Nazis. (SLIGHT SPOILER: Just to clarify, the initial bombings killed out many of the animals, but hitting the zoo was, as I understand it, not an intentional act, not that that fact lessened the animals’ suffering any).- K. A. T.

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Michael McElhatton, Daniel Bruhl
Directors: Niki Caro
Writers: Angela Workman
Producers: Jeff Abberley, Jamie Patricof, Diane Miller Levin, Kim Zubick
Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: French, Spanish
Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: PG-13 Parents Strongly Cautioned
Studio: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: July 4, 2017
Run Time: 126 minutes
ASIN: B071RCM1BX