“Project Nim”is an art-house documentary, but its story arc is pure Hollywood – an emotional rollercoaster of inspirational highs and shattering lows
whose epic narrative couldn’t be fictionalized with greater poignancy. The protagonist at the center of the story is Nim Chimpsky, a storied chimpanzee from Oklahoma wrestled at birth from his mother’s arms and raised as a human child in the 1970s Upper West Side as a scientific experiment in language. His life would be a nomadic one, shuffled against his will from a freewheeling, irresponsible environment to a controlled laboratory setting to caged confinement in a zoolike prison to an inhumane disease-testing lab, all the while developing human consciousness and becoming proficient in sign language.
James Marsh (“Man on Wire”) directs this highly publicized historical artifact with the benefit of hindsight. Listening to many of this saga’s key players today under the glare of Marsh’s Kleig lights – such as Stephanie Lafarge, Nim’s first human mother, a flower child who breast-fed the chimp and gave him marijuana; Herb Terrace, the scientist who organized the study and orchestrated some of Nim’s less favorable relocations; and Laura, a seemingly wonderful research assistant who fizzled out of the project after a brief romantic fling with Herb – it’s clear that this project was doomed by mismanagement. Nim becomes the tragic center of human error, and should similar studies be conducted in the future, movies like Project Nim (and the book that inspired it) could be an informative blueprint on, primarily, what not to do.
The film raises a number of vital themes: the behavioral similarities between humans and chimps, who share most of our genetic code; the “nature vs. nurture” debate; and the ethical question of animal testing, particularly on primates as cognitively advanced as chimps. It’s a hefty, stylized and sensationalized melodrama that will hit home with more than just the PETA set.
But those with a prior knowledge of chimpanzee studies may find the picture sorely lacking, if not dishonest in its omissions. Nim is presented as the be-all and end-all of sign language experiments in chimps, without any consideration of Washoe, the first signing chimp and an exemplary success story who lived a healthy life until the age of 42. This information may have impacted the heartbreaking gravitas and singularity of Marsh’s film; as it is, its absence questions the studiousness of the movie. This is a documentary best absorbed as a wild ride in a tortured animal kingdom. Get on the rollercoaster and expect to be moved.
“Project Nim” opens Friday at Regal Delray Beach 18, 1660 S. Federal Highway, and the Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.
