Families are complicated, and having to unpack that in a documentary can be tough. In American Zoo, we focus primarily on the Catskill Game Farm, which for decades was a massive zoo that a family got to grow up on and around, because someone had to run it. But just who is that someone?
The film uses the present to reflect the past as we learn of Heinz Hezck, a German doctor who was invited in 1959 to come over and run this zoo. And Yes, he’s that kind of German, or at least appeared to be, and that is something that the documentary unpacks. Perhaps even more than the attraction of the zoo, is that Hezck was a scientist at heart, and as other scientists point out, often ethical considerations become flexible when there’s a chance for funding. The argument being that perhaps he was a little less Nazi, and a little more opportunistic. His work on species really started to provide a foundation for others who now believe they can resurrect extinct animals, like the Wooly Mammoth.
So, we do follow his daughter, and her husband, as they carefully unpack this complex morality tale, but we also get a glimpse at a man not easily defined, and learn more about a zoo in New York that has been closed since 2006. Hezck is just a fraction of that history, as he passed in 1982, and the zoo was later run by Kathy Schultz, so not the entire thing is about a German doctor, however, the film does seem to want to balance that part with nearly as much weight as the zoo itself,because of how complicated it is.
Like with most documentaries, I learned some stuff about a thing I knew nothing about. I am not a zoo aficionado, so I was unaware there was a Catskill Game Farm, let alone the history surrounding it. And, like nearly every independent film I’m given, it also didn’t have audio description, so that will maybe come with distribution.
The weird thing is, this feels very much like the kind of documentary PBS would pick up and run, but with their funding the way it is now, I have no idea how they are structuring all of that moving forward. Sure, they get private donations, but enough to platform documentaries like this which would totally appeal to a PBS crowd? If you live on PBS/NPR, this feels like the kind of thing you’d enjoy. For me, like most documentaries, it was fine, notably because so many documentaries now have to feature our world on fire, reminding us of all the things we are currently doing wrong, and I tend to lean a bit more overall toward those activist style features because they are most likely to rock my world. I also, of course, appreciate documentaries that shed a light on the disabled community. This is aspirationally educational, and flirting with being a slice of Americana.
Fresh: 8.0/10
