• _The Zookeeper's Wife_

    From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Sun Apr 9 21:36:40 2017
    Because of the middling reviews and the rather listless
    trailer, I was not expecting very much of _The Zookeeper's
    Wife_. Niki Caro's new film turns out to be quite a gem.

    Jessica Chastain gives another Tour de Force performance
    which is given short drift from the newspaper reviews.
    Her Antonina is feminine and withdrawn -- exactly the
    opposite of her _Miss Sloane_. She is wary, watchful,
    holds her body with aristocratic stillness, and mostly
    let her sparkling eyes do her talking. She pitches her
    voice high and soft (the character is Polish -- I know
    a couple Polish women and they speak English in exactly
    the same way). There is always that small hesitation,
    that slight unwillingness to fully unveil herself;
    I wish the lead actress in Malick's _Song to Song_ has
    such nuance! (More on that otherwise brilliant film
    later.) She only lets loose, becomes uninhabited, when
    cuddling her baby leopards, or racing her ostrich
    like a schoolgirl, or resuscitating a baby elephant.
    Much later in the film, she opens up to a Jewish girl
    who has been traumatized by rape, and reveals why
    she is this way. As the film progresses, she takes
    on more far more risk bysheltering Jewish fugitives
    from the Warsaw Ghetto. She also becomes the head
    of household as her husband absents himself to join
    the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising. She has to
    feign a coquettish relationship with the Nazi German
    zoologist, which leads to a couple of powerhouse
    scenes. Watching her negotiate these transitions --
    her voice growing richer, to an operatic vibrato --
    is such a privilege.

    Niki Caro directs the screenplay very effectively.
    It is not the Malick-like, visionary achievement that
    her maligned _A Heavenly Vintage_ is, but there is
    no false note in the film either. Stephen Holden of
    the NY Times complains about the film's "tame" treatment
    of the Holocaust. I don't agree at all -- only the
    most jaded will call this film anything but a hard
    PG-13. There is an attempted rape of Antonina, a
    girl is raped off-screen, two Polish women are executed
    on screen at point-blank range, trusting children
    open their arms to be lifted into trains that will
    take them to death camps, and numerous animals are
    shot, bombed, mulilated. Maybe cinephiles have become
    so inured to violence that nothing is shocking enough,
    that we want more and more excess? The supporting
    cast, mostly Czech, are dignified in the face of
    impossible demands placed on their characters, but
    the animals do steal the show somewhat. Women can
    be freakishly devoted to animals, and the vegan
    Chastain (in real life and on screen) acts like she
    has been a zoo-hand all her life. I think the critics
    and box-office prognosticators have underestimated
    have much this film will appeal to the female audience.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 6 16:27:17 2017
    I used to think that a film is worth seeing 0, 2, or infinite
    number of times. _The Zookeeper's Wife_ is worth more than 2.
    In the scene near the end, when the Nazi zoologist threatens to
    shoot Chastain's son -- and does shoot off-screen -- her facial
    (and bodily) expressions is simply priceless and worth the admission
    all by themselves. Meryl Streep never did more in _Sophie's
    Choice_, for which she won the Oscar. I hope this is finally
    Chastain's year.

    With a lot of prominent roles -- Rooney Mara's in _Song to Song_,
    even Amy Adams' in _The Arrival_ and _Nocturnal Animals_ -- I tend
    to recast the character in my head during =the films' slow
    moments. When Chastain is the lead actress, like in _The Zookeeper's
    Wife_ and _Miss Sloane_, the idea of recasting never comes up. She
    is such a force of nature, manages to propel so much of herself
    on screen, is simply such a commanding presence regardless of
    what the role is, it is impossible to do anything but be drawn
    in and be mesmesrized by her performance. She distorts cinematic
    space like vortex; existing laws don't apply to her.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------

    The American Chastain plays a WWII era Polish woman (who probably
    has Russian roots). The Nazi is played by a Spanish actor, and
    her husband by a Belgian. The film is set in Warsaw but shot in
    the Czech republic, and it appears that more of the supporting
    actors are Czech than Polish. All this is no doubt a concession
    to financing concerns. I'm glad that no one has criticized this
    arrangement, calling it American- or Czech-"washing." There has
    been a lot of commotion about Asian actors not being hired to
    play Asian roles, or Black British actors being cast as
    African Americans. For Asians, this boils down to a lack of
    career opportunities. (Chastain herself, bless her soul, has
    been outspoken and supportive on this issue.) But if hiring slots
    were not an issue, one would hope that casting is color-blind.
    The last thing we need is Asian thespians ghettoized and typecast
    as kungfu fighters. I would love to see a film about slavery where
    African Americans play slave-owners and white actors play slaves.
    That would be really provocative and challenge our preconceptions,
    but in the current climate, it would probably provoke boycott --
    if not outright riots.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)