Project Nim

Saw Project Nim, a documentary about the life of nim, a chimpanzee who was taken from his mother at the age of two weeks to be raised as a human. This was part of a scientific experiment about the linguistic powers of a primate. As with the experiment, the film is interested in the intersection of the intellectual and the animal. The head researcher, for example, is made out to be a fame-hungry hot-shot, eager to make a name for himself (this is no knock, by the way. Plenty of great work has been done in the name of tenure.) More sketchily, his assistants are a revolving cast of pretty eighteen-year-old research assistants. His ego, the ego of his assistants, his work, and Nim himself all intersect in interesting ways. If you see this film, please be aware: you will see a chimp smoke a joint.

The first woman he stays with is a very loving and free-spirited woman who talks fondly of Nim destroying her husband's books in an effort to supplant him as perceived alpha male. I suspect she may be a pathological narcissist. She is supplanted by another woman who speaks in a (very appropriate) horrified manner about his first "mother" giving him alcohol and pot (the first mother compares her parting with Nim as being "just like" his parting with his original chimp mother. "Yes, but you weren't shot with a tranq dart, now were you?" I shouted at the screen. Narcissist.) Anyway, this new woman tries to teach Nim more sign-language but has the misfortune of having to take care of him during his puberty. If she turned her back on him too quickly, she tells us, he would leap on her and bite until the blood ran. The hot-shot scientist anemically tells us that he was not particularly alarmed by this reported behavior.

Clearly the scientist's animal excitement about the results of his research and his emotional reaction to the media storm it was kicking up overwhelmed his perceived need for personal involvement. His basal desire for status and approval overwhelmed and harmed his own intellectual pursuit. But this pursuit, of course, was directly concerned with attempting to defeat the primitive nature of the chimp by virtue of grand human intellect, as personified by the diaphanous muses he recruits (and fucks. Two of them are quite frank about this.) This intellectual/bestial interplay interested me immensely throughout the film.

It is however not exactly the focus of the film. The theme of man vs beast runs through the film but is increasingly overwhelmed by the cruel treatment of Nim by well-meaning scientific labs and animal sanctuaries who have no idea what to do with him. He only wants to be around people, but will casually crush the skull of a yapping dog. This animal-rights theme becomes the focus and the film ends on a predictable, disinteresting note. Perhaps the filmmaker is suggesting the angelic intellect has won this round, but I'm much more interested in the interplay and the duality. If the gentle yin completely defeats the raging yang, then who does she have sex with?

An interesting film, not least for it's lurid, fascinating central story. I feel it attempts to integrate this story into a larger context and thereby gain some meaning from it, but it ultimately lets the story overwhelm itself. By implying that the intellect wins out, the filmmakers have let the primitive desire for closure rule. And thus I can end this post, serene in the knowledge that the thematic dualism is preserved and thereby succumbing to my own animal confirmation bias. Everyone wins. (Even the chimp.)