The Promise wasn’t a bad movie just because Oscaar Isaac adopted an Ottoman-era Armenian accent, and Exodus: Gods and Kings didn’t have its dignity restored by the fact that its all-white cast of Biblical heroes were allowed to speak in whatever way they felt comfortable that day. Here’s the thing about bad or outlandish accents: They don’t really ruin good movies. They often end up doing that anyway, since some work harder than others - and nobody works harder than Jessica Chastain.Īctors Should Try Period-Appropriate Accents, No Matter How Silly But if you are going to make your movie in English because, you know, you want people to see it - in the meantime, you’ll find me over here, yelling at clouds - then just let the actors use their natural accents. Honestly, I think that all movies should reflect the natural language of their setting and characters, and the choice to forego that realism puts the integrity of the film’s world-building at risk Natalie Portman did it right. And the more Jessica Chastain sounds like a Polish person speaking English, the more the audience is going to be like, “Hey, Jessica Chastain worked really hard to sound like a Polish person speaking English!” Accents are a sign of otherness, a meaningful signifier of the migrant characters are being othered that shouldn’t be othered, or at least not in that way. By afflicting the actors with what amounts to an affectation, the film may be signaling to the audience that, hey, these are Poles, but it’s also betraying the whole nature of language. Polish people don’t speak Polish with Polish accents. Who needs subtitles when there’s enough English-language television on Netflix that you could stream the rest of your life away without encountering a single written word? But that still doesn’t explain why, if a movie were being set in Warsaw during the Second World War (to give an example for no reason in particular) that the characters would be speaking English with Polish accents. But what would have been the alternative? Is it better for actors to use their normal accents in period pieces, or try to be as accurate to the time and place as possible? Below, three Vulture editors make the case for their preferred option. “ The Zookeeper’s Wife goes awry, as Jessica Chastain wrestles to sound as Polish as possible,” Variety says, while the Guardian notes, “Chastain goes all-in on her Polish accent, to the point of distraction.” Having seen the movie, we can confirm: It’s that bad. The Julliard-trained actress employs a strong Polish accent in the new Holocaust drama, and the results are … not great. People can’t stop talking about the way Jessica Chastain talks in The Zookeeper’s Wife. There's also a fair amount of smoking (accurate for the era) and drinking.Jessica Chastain in The Zookeeper’s Wife. While there's no strong language to worry about, characters do embrace passionately, and sex is implied (a naked breast is briefly seen). There are many moments of tension and fear, but characters also show compassion and courage in the face of tremendous odds. People are executed, animals are shot, and Jews are rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto and later placed on trains bound for concentration camps. A teen girl is raped by Nazi soldiers (the act itself isn't shown, but viewers see her being taken away and then beaten and bloody after the fact). Expect many disturbing scenes of wartime carnage and destruction - including bombings, battles, explosions, and shootings. Jessica Chastain stars as Antonina Zabinski, who, with her husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), turned their zoo into a different kind of sanctuary during the Nazis' occupation of their city. Parents need to know that The Zookeeper's Wife is an intense, sometimes-brutal drama based on the true story (which inspired Diane Ackerman's same-named book) of a couple who helped save hundreds of Warsaw Jews during World War II.
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