_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Her Antonina is feminine and withdrawn -- exactly the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
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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
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