美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Femininity Is Not Weakness,' Jessica Chastain Says Of 'Zookeeper's Wife'

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

In the new film, "The Zookeeper's Wife," Jessica Chastain plays Antonina Zabinska. It's World War II. And along with her husband, Antonina runs the Warsaw Zoo. She has a way with animals, but she's leery of humans.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE")

JESSICA CHASTAIN: (As Antonina Zabinski) You can never tell who your enemies are or who to trust. Maybe that's why I love animals so much. You look in their eyes, and you know exactly what's in their hearts.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: As the horrors of Nazi 1 rule in Poland unfold, Antonina is slowly transformed, and she ultimately helps rescue hundreds of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto 2. "The Zookeeper's Wife" is based on the 2007 book of the same name. It's a true story drawn 3 from Antonina's journals. Director Niki Caro and Jessica Chastain joined us to talk about what drew them to the material.

CHASTAIN: Antonina was always a healer. She believed every living creature was equal and deserved respect and love and honor as miracles. But it was really important - when playing the character, I didn't want the decision to be so easy because I feel like that undervalues the courage that she had.

In that time period, if you were to give even a Jewish person a glass of water, you would be shot. Your children would be shot. And so for her to make the decision to hide people, it just meant that she was risking the lives of her children. But I don't know that there was another way for Antonina because she really was a healer.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Niki Caro, this is a seminal 4 period in World War II history - the Warsaw ghetto, the German invasion. What did you want to get across about this particular moment in time?

NIKI CARO: I saw in this material a new kind of Holocaust 5 movie, if you like, because it was a woman's perspective and about a woman's experience of war. I wanted to honor that and Antonina - her compassion 6, her courage - but also the manner with which she created sanctuary 7.

It wasn't just that she was hiding people inside of her zoo at great risk to herself. It was the fact that she wanted these people not just to survive, but to survive with their dignity and their humanity intact. So she was bringing them music and art, a small amount of creature comforts and luxury. And this sensitivity to the human spirit I really wanted to bring through in this movie within the context of Holocaust and the war.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Obviously, the other big characters in this are the animals themselves and how Antonina interacts with them and also just how the Jewish community gets pulled in and put into these animal pens from this terrible place which is the Warsaw ghetto. Can you talk about that interplay between how the animals are treated and how the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto are treated?

CARO: One of the very interesting things about this story for me was the tension between what is human and what is animal. What is a cage, and what is sanctuary? And, yes, the Warsaw ghetto is the biggest cage of all.

And there is a moment in the movie where we see the banality 8 of evil and tremendous inhumanity where a Polish couple walking by the streets of Warsaw taking photos of one another outside as if it was some kind of grotesque 9 attraction as if they might have been at a zoo in fact.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I thought that was a very modern touch, by the way - the sort of selfies in front of something unimaginable.

CARO: It is, and yet that comes from documentary accuracy from some of the research that me and my team did in getting ready to make this movie.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Since you're both here, I'd like to get your views a little bit more broadly on where you feel women in film are, specifically women directors and women leads to make a movie like this, which focuses on the female experience in conflict.

CHASTAIN: It's not just in terms of female filmmakers. You have to also look at studio heads. You have to look at writers. And also, what no one seems to talk about is critics. I find it very interesting when, you know, 90 percent of the critics that review films are men. How is that helpful when trying to create stories from a feminine point of view?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think you're mentioning this because some of the critics of this film have said, why is Antonina the hero when her husband is the one going off and fighting and smuggling 10 Jews out of the ghetto? Why focus on her story when he's the real hero? Is that what you're getting at?

CHASTAIN: Actually, I'm going to let Niki take this one.

CARO: Yeah, yeah. I want this one so badly.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Take it away.

CARO: Look, this is what it is. Most movies about war are from the male point of view, but wars are fought by both genders 11. And Antonina's war was fought with compassion. Now that is no less relevant of a perspective on war than the other. We are more used to men fighting with guns and bombs. And those sequences are very effective. But in a woman's story, in a story about "The Zookeeper's Wife," she is the hero of that story. And her contribution was equally powerful as her husband's.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jessica?

CHASTAIN: We need to understand that femininity is not weakness. And our society, for some reason, equates 12 the two. And in my personal opinion, I think it's exceptionally brave to fight violence with love and, perhaps, even more scary to not have a weapon in your hand and just try to heal others. And I'm so proud to be part of a story that inspires that. And I hope society, the world will start to value femininity and women's stories.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jessica Chastain, Niki Caro, thank you so much for being with us.

CARO: Thank you.

CHASTAIN: Thank you very much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MARK ORTON'S "THE RETURN")

GARCIA-NAVARRO: "The Zookeeper's Wife" is out now.