PROJECT NIM

UK, 2011, 93 minutes, Colour.
Directed by James Marsh.

James Marsh made the fascinating and Oscar-winning documentary on tightrope walker, Phillippe Petit, Man on Wire. He has now made another fascinating documentary but not in the way we might have imagined. It is the story of chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky, who was the subject of an experiment during the 1970s. Taken from an Oklahoma centre, Nim was fostered by a family, who were not expert on care of monkeys. He was then taken away to Texas by himself where he bonded with a worker. But, then he was taken to Lemsip, an institute for animal use in testing drugs.

While Nim seemed to respond to sign language and indicated some kind of communication, Herbert Terrace, the initiator of the experiment, changed his mind about its success and terminated the program. But, instinctively, Nim does some violence and damage to carers.

But, what is of great interest along with the issue of cruelty to animals and experimentation with them, is how the humans behaved. While a couple of characters are presented by actors, most of the principals are seen in the movies made at the time and, seated individually, being interviewed in the present. There was a clash of personalities, some highhanded and authoritarian interventions, a lack of communication abilities and sensitivities, which means the film is also a study of human behaviour.

The present interviews juxtaposed with the past movie footage also remind us of how age and ageing is inevitable and irrevocable.

The story of Nim is presented chronologically and we can sympathise with the chimpanzee, first of all being treated like a spoiled child, as someone remarks. Then, without warning, sudden change, isolation like imprisonment. Then some care. Then experimentation. Then old age.

The human story goes back and forth giving some of them the opportunity to reassess their behaviour (especially the director of Lemsip), while others are tearful about the past, rueful, regretful – and sometimes condemnatory.
There are moral issues in the film: the right of the experimenter to toy with animals in this way, and for such a long time, and with people participating who were not qualified; and there is the question of animals, no matter how close their structure is to humans, actually having intelligence and whether the sign language recognition is from mimicry. Noam Chomsky advocates humans as the only intelligent specis – and the name Nim Chimpski was derived from Chomsky.

(A film for comparison is the French story of a gorilla in a zoo, Nenette, and care and zoo visitors.)