Like many, I first discovered the works of New Zealand-born director Niki Caro through her auspicious second feature, 2002’s WHALE RIDER, after which she hasn’t made another feature in New Zealand. Instead she came to America to shoot the much-underrated sexual harrassment courtroom drama NORTH COUNTRY, starring Charlize Theron and a rising young star named Jeremy Renner. I was genuinely impressed with her 2015 sports drama MCFARLAND, USA, with Kevin Costner, and I’m looking forward to her announced biopic CALLAS, with Noomi Rapace as the famed opera star Maria Calls. But Caro has been in the new lately because it appears she’ll be directing the live-action, non-musical version of Disney’s MULAN, which we didn’t have time to talk about, but she does seem to be officially attached to the project.
Her current release, out today, is THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE, starring Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh as married Polish zookeepers Antonina Żabińska and Jan Żabiński, who are forced to give up their peaceful life running the Warsaw Zoo to serve the invading Nazis in the early years of World War II. And while appearing to tending to livestock that will eventually feed Nazi soldiers, they also are sneaking out Jews from the Warsaw ghetto and finding them safe passage out of the country. It’s a remarkable story, told beautifully by Caro and her actors, who also include Daniel Brühl as Hitler’s top zoologist Lutz Heck, who is somewhat blinded by his feelings for Antonina to notice that she’s playing him in order to keep prying eyes away from their underground railroad.
I had a chance to briefly chat with Caro recently about her approach to this important material, as well as the dignity and grace that Chastain brings to the work. With that, please enjoy my talk with the talented Niki Caro…
Niki Caro: Hi, Steve.
Capone: Hi, Niki. How are you?
NC: I’m good. How are you?
Capone: I’m good. So happy to be talking to you. I’ve been a great admirer of your for many years.
NC: Oh, thank you.
Capone: Initially, what do you remember responding to about this story, and what hooked you in about this couple? It’s a very different way of telling a story about the Holocaust.
NC: Yeah, funny enough, it was exactly that. It’s different, and also Antonina herself. Her story represented a different kind of Holocaust movie, and one that could really focus on kindness and compassion and courage and care and a healing inside of that horrific moment in history.
Capone: Having it set in a zoo redefines what a cage is and can become.
NC: No, you’re absolutely right. As a filmmaker, I was really preoccupied with those ideas. What is a cage and what is sanctuary? What is our human nature and what is our animal nature? And this just seemed like really new territory to discuss in a Holocaust movie, let alone the fact that it had animals, and animals do somehow funnily enough expand our humanity. The framing of this story within a zoo, the first violence of war you see is a bomb dropping on a zoo, and what happens to those innocent creatures opens us up to understanding the violence that’s going to be inflicted on humans and humanity. It just opens us up to that in a different way.
Capone: From a logistical point of view, how do you even begin to tackle a story of this magnitude? Where do you find the zoo? Or did you have to build it? Where did you find a place that looks like a ghetto, or did you have to build that too?
NC: Well, to start at the beginning, we shot in Prague, in the Czech Republic. I couldn’t conceive of making an authentic version of this real story about a female zookeeper and use fake animals, and neither could the budget have handled that. So the zoo the animals’ work was going to be in-camera, which requires a very careful, very respectful, very calm way of shooting.
We built our own zoo in the center of Prague. Yeah. In an abandoned, neglected exhibition park with a genius production designer called Suzie Davies, who just took me there one day. It was just covered in weeds, and she said, “I think we can do it here.” We rebuilt the Żabiński’s villa from the Warsaw Zoo exactly, then we created the zoo around it, and we filled the zoo species by species, because you have to work so carefully with live animals.
Capone: Had you been to the Warsaw Zoo? Because it’s still around, right?
NC: Yes, of course. The Warsaw Zoo was very damaged, of course, in the war and rebuilt, but the villa was intact, so we recreated the villa exactly. And Warsaw herself was a beautiful, beautiful place before the war. It was a belle epoque, knows as the Paris of the North. So when we created the Warsaw zoo, we wanted to do so in a way that represented Warsaw before World War II. So we wanted to make a zoo that was very, very beautiful in the belle epoque style. So after lots and lots of research and many impassioned conversations, the zoo was built. She built a zoo. It was so cool.
Capone: Was Jessica Chastain always the person you wanted to play this character?
NC: It has to be said that, she’s everybody’s first choice for everything, but she seemed uniquely right for this, beyond her extraordinary skill as an actor. She is a famous animal advocate; she loves animals. And it so happens that she’s an animal whisperer. She was the biggest gift that this production received. And she was the biggest gift I received, because my vision of populating the film with real creatures meant that I needed to have a partner that could handle that, and “handling it” is to put it mildly. She has such an other worldly connection with them, such tremendous trust between her and those creatures, so there was no doubling for her. Everything you see with the animals is Jessica herself.
Capone: The thing that kept hitting me as I was watching the film was that, this couple, other than being zoo owners, they were ordinary people who could have ridden out the war with very little danger or hardship to themselves. They put themselves at such risk, and I’m wondering, did you give much thought to why they did what they did? It was above and beyond to say the least.
NC: They never considered themselves heroic. They didn’t considered themselves extraordinary or special. They did what they did because it was the right thing to do. And I think because of their love and appreciation for animals, their instinct to care for them, meant that they carried an identical respect for life in all of its forms. Life is precious, and it deserves to be protected.
Capone: As much as this is told from a woman’s perspective and it’s her story, you also have these two remarkable actors, these two men, pulling at her in different ways. Especially Johan who I’ve seen in a couple of things before, how did you think to cast him in this?
NC: Yes! We were for sure under a lot of pressure to cast A-list actors, and Jessica called me, and she had seen THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN and she said we need to see this guy, Johan Heldenbergh, who I have never heard of before. So I made it my business to see the movie, and I’ll never be the same after watching that film. It’s so amazing. It jus destroyed me. Then I met with Johan, and it was so clear to me that he should play Jan Żabiński, and he was a magnificent partner for Jessica and a magnificent partner for me, and it gives me nothing but a thrill to introduce him to audiences through this movie.
Capone: I hope people discover him, because he’s tremendous here.
NC: Yeah, he is.
Capone: Are you ever going to go back to New Zealand to make a movie? That’s how I discovered you. Not that I don’t love what you’re doing. I’m dying to see your Maria Callas film and what you do with MULAN, but do you ever think about going back to make another film?
NC: I go back to New Zealand a lot. It’s where I come from, and I love it, and my family’s there, but I’ve got to say, my profession life has become a great deal easier being based in L.A. [laughs] Who would have thought? It took so many years to figure out that actually if you’re a working filmmaker, Los Angeles is actually quite a good place in the world to be.
Capone: I want to thank you, because NORTH COUNTRY is the film that introduced me to Jeremy Renner. I have a very vivid memory of thinking “Who the hell is that guy?” I had actually had seen him in one other film, but yeah, that was one that for years after that I just said, “Oh, that’s that actor from NORTH COUNTRY” before I learned his name.
NC: Maybe you’ll have the same response to Johan.
Capone: Him I remember from BROKEN CIRCLE. And he was just in something I saw recently, THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT, Catherine Deneuve. I think he’s great. Niki, thank you so much. Best of luck with this, and thank you for talking.
