From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.
Now I know that hindsight is a marvellous thing, but quite how anyone could ever have thought that playing God with another animate creature like this would ever be justifiable is beyond me. The scientists here may have been well meaning enough, but I don’t see how the writing on the wall could ever have been different for the chimp whom they called “Nim Chimpsky”. Wrested from his mother at birth, he is “adopted” like some sort of surrogate child by a group who are trying to prove that with a good deal of nurturing, they can teach him how to speak. They offer “Nim” all the trappings of family and become all that he knows and trusts and he reciprocates with behaviours that are loving, attention and mischievous. Then, of course, the science starts to intervene with what limited elements of the natural about this programme and soon he is incarcerated, experimented upon and downright betrayed by those who purported to “love” him. Funding issues and the more aggressive aspirations of science soon negate any potential humanity that might have applied here and predictably court battles loom as “Nim” becomes a sentient football - neglected and alone. It’s harrowing to watch this, if only because the whole scientific concept is arrogant and just plain wrong. With abundant film evidence of this project available to support this eye-opening documentary it potently illustrates, frequently augmented by the contributions of these scientists themselves, more and more the short-sightedness of a project that was only ever going to last as long as the dollars kept coming in. Arguments can be made about the broader term benefits (or not) of vivisection and animal experimentation when they are being used as guinea pigs by life saving pharma, perhaps, but this deliberate attempt to play with, even manipulate, the psychological and emotional behaviour of this young ape as if he were a teddy bear is nauseating to watch. Thought provoking and distasteful as this is, it’s a well structured film that actually takes quite an editorially neutral perspective with it’s presentation. Unlike those rearing “Nim”, we are not fed indoctrination by the film makers, just shown evidence and left to form our own judgements.
Kanopy
