Review of Project Nim (2011) by Mike V — 14 Jul 2011

What to me is interesting about this documentary is that it has at least as much to say about humanity as it does about chimpanzees. The movie shows us a unsettling story of how a chimp is shunted from human handler to human handler through the course of its life, but it also shows the frequent misguided anthropomorphizing of an animal that may indeed be much like us and yet is in many ways starkly different. If what at least in part inspires efforts at teaching language to chimps is an attempt to discover that which is human in our close simian cousins, this attempt often suffers as it fails to recognize that chimps are hard wired to behave in ways that defy our civilized sensibilities and which are often starkly violent. Chimps make poor candidates for living in human civilization, as is repeatedly demonstrated by the ways that humans in contact with Nim were injured by him, sometimes badly.

The director managed to interview almost all the key players in Nim's life, and included quite a bit of footage of Nim from the time when he was alive. We see sincere efforts at treating Nim well that sometimes go wrong, and we see people who fight for Nim's best interests, and we also see ambition and publicity seeking and callousness. The conflicting views and agendas of the people involved in Nim's story is quite interesting, but what I found most moving was seeing how some individuals worked in various ways for Nim's interests.

What struck me the most was the strange alien divide that separates humans from chimps. As close as people sometimes were to Nim, there was the ever present danger of an animal that could seriously harm or kill any human he became angry at, even those with who he had a strong bond. Yet at the same time this movie gave me a greater appreciation for humanity, warts and all. One individual in the movie used the word "humane" in describing the mistreatment of chimps at a laboratory testing facility. I was struck by the use of that word in particular, because it reflects our idea that compassion and treating others well is a particularly human quality. Of course, humans can also be jerks, as this movie certainly demonstrates, but the empathy some people in particular felt for Nim, an animal who was smart and yet unpredictable and dangerous, reminded me of our amazing capacity of altruistic compassion that even extends across to other species.

My only quibble with this movie is that, although it did briefly mention the recognition that chimps are physically incapable of uttering spoken human language, there was no mention made of the Washoe experiment, which inspired the Nim project. However, this movie is not so much about the scientific history, but rather is a narrative about the personal stories of Nim and the individuals who lived with him. And on that level the movie succeeds.