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,...
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,...
- 2/20/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
I have started digging through the pile of screeners I've been receiving and I started with one of the short-listed Oscar docs I had not seen, James Marsh's Project Nim, a film that essentially documents the real-life version of what you saw in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, only Nim never actually starts talking and the apes never "rise" against their human oppressors. However, you do end up hating the people and their treatment of these animals and only begin to feel good when you hear them tell stories of how they were scratched and/or bitten. Project Nim began in the early '70s as a young chimpanzee is the seventh of his mother's children to be taken from her, this stat alone is enough to rip at your heart and it happens inside the film's first three minutes. From there we watch as Columbia professor...
- 11/22/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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