The only disagreeable aspect of these opening scenes involves some conversation at a reception with Dr. It’s clear she has mutual affection with all of her charges, from lions to elephants, even tossing apples into the mouth of a huge hippo. It seems to be a perfect situation for this family as we watch Antonina open the gate to visitors (not customers, as there seems to be no entry fee), then ride her bike on daily rounds with a young camel following behind. Jan Żabiński (Johan Heldenbergh), own, live in, run the city zoo (Dad’s already out doing chores). What Happens: In summer 1939 Warsaw, Poland we begin with an idyllic scene as Antonina Żabiński (Jessica Chastain) awakens one morning with her young son, Ryszard (Timothy Radford Val Maloku when the boy’s a bit older) and a pair of lion cubs, which isn’t as strange as it might seem because she and her husband, Dr. What happens further can be found in Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book of the same name or other historical accounts, but that’s all I’ll say here for now (except, as you know, the Germans are finally driven out of Poland but at great expense to its citizens and their country). The tension of discovery is constant throughout this film, although scenes of on-the-spot Nazi executions are largely confined to soldiers shooting some of the zoo’s animals for cruel sport.
Jan responds, channeling his anger, by working with his wife to convince the Germans to use their property as a pig farm to provide food for the occupying soldiers (with the pigs fed from the garbage generated in the recently-established Jewish ghetto) but it’s all part of a covert plan to smuggle Jews out of the ghetto in the garbage truck, then hide them in the Żabińskis’ cellar until they can be moved elsewhere. Lutz Heck, known as “Hitler’s zoologist,” who wants to use the almost-abandoned-facility to carry out his experiments with breeding bison back to their ancestral form as an aspect of the Nazi obsession with purification, which brings him into the damaged Żabiński home where he’d like to cause more turmoil with his attraction to Antonina.
More trouble arrives in the person of Dr. “Executive Summary” (no spoilers) : In this film based on real events, what begins as an idyllic vision of harmony within the zookeeper family of Antonina and Jan Żabiński in addition to the love they share with the many animals they care for turns into a nightmare in September 1939 when Germany invades Poland, with the bombing of Warsaw doing great damage to the zoo and all its inhabitants.
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