First Trailer for The Zookeeper’s Wife, a Totally Irrelevant Movie About Saving People From Facism

Poor, un-timely Jessica Chastain. First she stars in Miss Sloane, a movie about a high-powered corporate lobbyist who changes sides to fight the Washington establishment—a process that, to choose a phrase at random, one might refer to as “draining the swamp.” Now she’s playing the lead in The Zookeeper’s Wife, based on the true story of Antonina Zabinska, a Polish woman who helped shelter Jews during the Nazi occupation. Watching the first trailer for the movie, which is based on Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book, one can’t help but be struck by its utter lack of contemporary resonance, as violence erupts in the streets of a once-peaceful country and ethnic and religious minorities suddenly find their very existence threatened by a fascist government. “You can never tell who your enemies are, or who to trust,” Chastain says, in no way reflecting the sense of fear and disorientation currently being experienced by tens of millions of Americans—or, for that matter, hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But don’t give up hope. Maybe by the time The Zookeeper’s Wife is released on March 31, the movie will have taken on some kind of contemporary cultural resonance. Or maybe, if we’re very lucky, it won’t.