PROJECT NIM Review: Powerful & Affecting
We look into the face of a chimpanzee and, more than with most animals, see something we recognise. Perhaps they feel the same way...
rating: 4
Between humans and animals there is an insurmountable comprehension barrier. We project emotions and personality onto them that may not be there, and we generally feel some empathy if we see them suffer. Occasionally it will seem that my cat really understands me, until I realise he just wants me to feed him. An animal can offer solace from the far more complex world of human relations, but they will still ultimately act according to their nature and evolution, a point underlined by Werner Herzogs documentary Grizzly Man, wherein Timothy Treadwell lived happily among the grizzly bears until one killed him. Of course, Treadwell was unstable to begin with; among mammals, grizzly bears are about the most efficient killing machines there are. Project Nim, the new documentary from James Marsh, director of Man on Wire, is concerned with the life of a chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky (surname inspired by Noam Chomsky), which was brought up basically as another family member by a family in the 70s as part of an experiment into chimpanzees communicative skills (using sign-language). Ultimately its instigator, Herbert S. Terrace, considered the project to have failed because the chimp learning a series of signs that will result in it being given food is not the same as language; he suggested its simply a more complex version of a dog giving you a paw. Terrace does not come out of this piece very well, and his science is questionable, but the documentary is really more concerned with the effect of the project, and of Nim, on those involved. He started, at two weeks old, with a reasonably wealthy, open-minded (read: hippy) family in the early 70s. Nim immediately gravitated towards the mother of the family, while showing far less affection for her husband. As with several of the people who dealt with Nim, they have no experience with chimps. He was eventually moved, at the behest of Dr Terrace, to an estate in New York, where Terrace and a psychology student, Laura-Ann Petitto, looked after him and tried to advance his vocabulary. Over the course of his life he was handled and taught by several people, some better equipped than others. When the experiment was over, he was cruelly placed in an enclosed, cramped compound with several other chimps (with which he had no experience).
There arent exactly heroes and villains in the piece it is fair and even-handed with the interviewees and I thought that everyone interviewed had some understandable motive. However Terrace seems to have misjudged things from the start, and the project is still the topic of scientific controversy, as are Terraces findings. Rather we see people who were deeply affected, in one way or another, by Nim. When he is young he brings out a maternal instinct in some of the women interviewed; when Stephanie saw Nim, years later, as an adult she noted how much affection she had lost. To a degree, the movie is about human vanity; we are the ones who tried to make Nim one of us, only to be surprised when he acted exactly like a chimp. A chimpanzees behaviour can be threatening and outright violent. His handlers were frequently bitten on the arm. One was bitten in the face. This couldnt have come as too much of a surprise to Terrace; a chimpanzee is not a pet. That Nim goes from such luxurious conditions to a cage and a cattle prod underlines the hypocrisy, and is among the movies more troubling, upsetting episodes. Now, decades later, many of the interviewees still find it difficult to talk about. 
The story is inherently interesting and Marsh and editor Jinx Godfrey, who have lots of footage of the chimp to work with, have a way, as with Man on Wire, of keeping the visual elements alive and interesting. Occasionally the style was something of a distraction for me; some elements better fitted the subject matter of Man on Wire, with its heist-movie structure, than Nims story. However I am judging Marsh against his own work; hes clearly one of the most interesting documentary filmmakers currently around. If I have made it sound excessively dark, it isnt: much of the earlier sections show Nim playing and showing affection and replicating human activity. He is usually friendly, particularly with a cat which eventually has to be taken off him when he becomes a little too friendly. It is hard not to adore Nim in places, which both makes us better understand the humans and understand the problems with the project. We look into the face of a chimpanzee and, more than with most animals, see something we recognise. Perhaps they feel the same way. But we have to realise, especially in a scientific context, that this feeds into anthropomorphism; the human desire to love animals is complicated by our desire to be loved in return. Nim is the constant in the documentary; he never fails to act exactly like a chimpanzee, whether affectionate or hostile. I was reminded of the familiar story of the frog who agrees to give a scorpion a ride across the river, on the basis that if the scorpion stings the frog, they both die. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog and as they both drown he asks the scorpion why he did it. Because Im a scorpion, he replies. Project Nim is out now in the U.K.