Review: Project Nim
Long before my college studies of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology at University of Texas in the 90s, I was fascinated by the research of primatologists. Perhaps it was the story of Koko, the gorilla who communicated through American sign language (ASL) that I found appealing, but later it was the field research of Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall that piqued my interest.
Controversy has plagued primate research for decades, with the most prominent issues being that of "humanizing" primates by taking them out of the wild and placing them in human environments -- or worse yet, subjecting them to the cruelty and isolation of animal testing.
Academy award-winning director James Marsh (Man on a Wire) brings these controversial topics to the screen in his latest film, Project Nim, which has made the Academy shortlist for Best Documentary. The movie was released earlier this year but returns to Violet Crown on Friday for another theatrical run.
Using newly discovered archival footage, dramatic re-creation, and personal interviews, Marsh weaves the complex and tragic story of Nim, a young chimpanzee taken from his mother as an infant. The film follows Nim from an atypical infancy and adolescence into adulthood. Columbia University psychology professor Herber Terrace originated the research study that focused on animal language acquisition, intent on proving whether a chimpanzee learned in ASL can form complete sentences. When only two weeks old, Nim is placed in a rather unorthodox environment with Terrace's former student and human "mother" Stephanie LaFarge and her family in a house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Nim quickly learns to communicate with his new family through sign language, but his strength and penchant for destruction results in his removal from the home to live on a large estate with several teachers, including project coordinator and head teacher Laura-Ann Petitto, Renee Falitz and Joyce Butler. As Nim's vocabulary grew so did his animal nature, and his attacks against humans resulted in the hospitalization of Falitz and eventually termination of the experiment.
After five years of living surrounded and spoiled by humans, Nim must learn how to interact with his own kind in the Oklahoma research center were he was born. Despite making lifelong friends with some of the staff including primate welfare advocate Bob Ingersoll, Nim's quality of life degrades as he is discreetly sold and moved to an isolated cage in New York University's LEMSIP lab for medical research. Thankfully news of his placement gets to his first human "family" who attempt to facilitate his release with the aid of the press and legal aid, although it's a high-profile animal rights activist who buys Nim and brings him to his animal sanctuary in Murchison, Texas. Nim is just as isolated in his captivity without any other chimps or signing humans for companionship or interaction.
Project Nim is an effective narrative displaying not only the life story of Nim, but the influences and negative impacts of the humans that anthropomorphised Nim and shaped his behavior for his first five years -- and then placed him in a cage. Through all the personal interviews, Ingersoll is the only human who comes across as truly caring about Nim's welfare. Even his surrogate "mothers" and the animal-rights activist have their own agendas. Marsh does not hold back on allowing his interview subjects to express their motivation and often cavalier attitude towards their interactions with Nim. The cinematography and editing balance out well-dramatized re-enactments with interview snippets and enhanced with graphic animation to create a compelling film.
Despite the harsh reality of Project Nim, Marsh gives a reasonably unbiased view on the controversial subjects at hand, but there's a lot of room for thought and discussion when it's revealed that the medical research is for FDA-mandated hepatitis vaccine testing. Instead, Marsh presents a compelling biography of an animal that despite his strength is still at the mercy of humans. I highly recommend checking out Project Nim in its encore theatrical run.