DVD Review: ‘Project Nim’ Powerfully Chronicles the Tragic Life of a Chimp

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CHICAGO – James Marsh’s much talked-about documentary, “Project Nim,” is one of the saddest films of 2011, charting the mishandling of a chimpanzee by well-meaning but misguided humans. Nim Chimpsky was the simian subject of a widely publicized ’70s-era experiment created by Professor Herbert Terrace. His goal was to discover if a chimp could speak in complete sentences via sign language.

Just as Marsh’s 2008 Oscar-winner, “Man on Wire,” seamlessly blended archival footage and interviews with reenactments to create a narrative with the tone and pace of a thriller, the director applies the same cinematic style to “Nim.” The chimp’s life was so complicated that a linear plot line certainly makes the most sense. We meet the human subjects in the order that they came and went in Nim’s life and their on-camera testimonials are admirably honest but often infuriating.

DVD Rating: 4.5/5.0

After shooting his mother with a tranquilizer, Doctor William Lemmon took the newborn Nim out of Oklahoma’s Institute for Primate Studies and put him in the care of psychology student Stephanie LaFarge, who Terrace chose as the chimp’s surrogate mother. This was the first of many grave missteps made by the professor. Like many of Nim’s subsequent caregivers, LaFarge had no knowledge about chimpanzees and decided to raise Nim as one of her children. Showing no sense of desire for discipline, she allowed her household to descend into anarchy by allowing the chimp to do what he wanted, while sending her exasperated husband out of the house. She thought it was perfectly fine for Nim to breastfeed as well as partake in more adult activities, such as smoke a joint and take multiple swigs of alcohol. Daughter Jenny Lee laughingly defends her mother’s conduct by saying, “It was the ’70s.”

Yet LaFarge finally admits in a remarkably candid interview that part of her never wanted Nim to learn language, thus making her the last person on earth that the professor would want onboard the project. It wasn’t until Terrace moved Nim to Delafield Estate in 1975 that he began to show signs of real progress under the guidance of scientists Laura-Ann Petitto, Bill Tynan and Joyce Butler. But once the growing chimp’s need for human contact began clashing with his volatile animalistic nature, Terrace hurled the hyper-intelligent animal back into his Oklahoma cage where he was treated like any other prisoner. It’s a disgraceful act of animal cruelty waged against a creature that was treated like a human for the entirety of its youth.

Professor Herbert Terrace and Nim Chimpsky are featured in James Marsh’s Project Nim.
Photo credit: Susan Kuklin

One of the film’s most heartbreaking moments occurs when Terrace visits Nim in Oklahoma a year after abandoning him. Nim immediately recognizes his former owner and clings to him for dear life. Terrace shares the animal’s jubilation, but his smile appears calculated for the camera crew that he brought with him. It’s clear that Nim was expecting to be saved by Terrace, but the one-time visit proved to be little more than a photo opp. The professor later claims that the experiment was a regrettable failure since Nim’s patterns of signs didn’t technically constitute as language. Yet the archival footage of Nim’s friendship and fluid communication with compassionate primatologist Bob Ingersoll appears to disprove this theory time and again. The final act of the film is bound to reduce animal lovers to tears as the ever-powerless Nim finds himself transported by veterinarian James Mahoney to the testing laboratories of LEMSIP and the solitary confinement of Cleveland Armory’s Fund for Animals. In many ways, “Project Nim” is very much a kindred spirit with Rupert Wyatt’s action blockbuster, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and together they would make a fitting double feature. Inventively shot by Michael Simmonds and vibrantly scored by Dickon Hinchliffe, “Nim” is a startlingly moving tear-jerker with the power to provoke and enrage audiences for generations to come.

Project Nim was released on DVD on Feb. 7, 2012. Photo credit: Lionsgate Entertainment

The film is presented in its 1.78:1 aspect ratio, accompanied by English and Spanish subtitles, and includes a particularly candid audio commentary track from Marsh, who explains that he rarely watches his own work once it’s completed. Like Woody Allen, he can only spot the flaws, and this leads him to take an uncommonly perceptive and honest look at “Nim.” He admits that he wasn’t interested in the big picture of the project overall, and his preference for focusing on the human and simian drama would disappoint viewers attracted to the scientific aspects of the story. Though he voices his belief that Terrace was justified in halting the project, Marsh is critical of the professor’s belief (echoed by Mahoney at the end) that apes can forgive humans of their transgressions.

In Ed Perkins’s terrific half-hour making-of documentary, Terrace is conspicuously missing from the film’s festival screenings. It was subsequently revealed that Marsh had kept Terrace from attending since many of the other human subjects didn’t want him there. Terrace was immensely unhappy with how he was depicted in the film, and complained that the film misrepresented his research as a failure, even though he conveys that very notion in an archival interview. Since the film includes no direct criticisms of the professor, perhaps Terrace was disturbed merely by the unsettling truths captured in the footage and how his intellectual aloofness caused him to overlook the abuse he had inflicted on the chimpanzee.

Yet in all fairness, the film itself is far from objective. Every editing choice and music cue supports the idea that the professor was a cold-hearted publicity-seeker while Ingersoll was a heroic champion of animal welfare. Rounding out the extras is a touching featurette following Ingersoll on the press tour and his tearful reaction to the warm embrace of film fans. There’s also a visit to Alison Cronin’s England sanctuary, “Monkey World,” which would’ve served as a superior location for Nim to live out his final days. The most fascinating behind-the-scenes segment centers on the efforts of makeup artist Nik Williams and ape impersonator Peter Elliot to create a credible “Nim” in the reenactments scenes, since the use of a simian actor would be hypocritical in the extreme. Their work is so convincing that it’s entirely invisible.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]