Being a true animal lover requires an understanding that the beasts we share the planet with are far more unpredictable and vulnerable than humans, who possess the singular ability to vocalize their needs and the shelter of civilization. This knowledge should ideally guide any human interactions with animals, such as when I was walking Sadie, a gorgeous dog I watched for a week last year while her human parents were out of town, and she began aggressively snarling and barking at another passing canine. I had to hold Sadie back from engaging her perceived rival, but even though she was technically behaving badly, I knew, as any person should, that her actions were not to be punished. She couldn't let me know in English what her beef was with the dog--I'd like to think she was being either protective or possessive of me, naturally--and I'm smart enough to realize that her behavior, while annoying, did not constitute the kind of flaw that would make me love her any less. She's a dog, and it's just in her nature.
Part of what makes Project Nim (2011, James Marsh) the best and most engrossing documentary of the year so far is its implicit critique of how an unfortunate number of people who cross paths with the chimpanzee at its center, adorably named Nim Chimpsky, are so oblivious to Nim's basic animal nature.
Nim is taken from his mother in a prologue that hooks the viewer right from the start, and then placed with Dr. Herb Terrace, a Columbia University professor who, in the '70s, takes on an experiment to test whether or not humans can communicate with chimps using sign language. Nim becomes his subject for the experiment, and to provide the chimp with a home and someone to hopefully sign with, he passes Nim onto ex-girlfriend Stephanie LaFarge, who's excited to raise Nim within her self-proclaimed "rich hippie" family. Stephanie ends up treating Nim like an ordinary human son, ignorant that such anthopomorphism doesn't take into account such behavior as Nim's territorial anger towards Stephanie's long-haired poet husband.
Despite such complications, Dr. Terrace's test of the age-old nature-vs.-nurture hypothesis yields results. Nim acquires quite the sign-language vocabulary. My favorite is his compound use of the signs for "stone" and "smoke," indicating that he wants to smoke marijuana (the sign-language teachers who work under Dr. Terrace get him hooked on the wacky tobacky).
I'm reluctant to share where Nim goes from Stephanie LaFarge's houshould, and the directions in which Dr. Terrace takes his experiment, because the film really benefits from the viewer going into it with as little foreknowledge of Nim's true-life story as possible. But it's revealing little to say that whereas Stephanie fails in her treatment of Nim as something more than he really is, other people who come into possession of the chimp falter in treating him as something less--a being whose life has no value. The blatant disregard for animal welfare captured on film is downright disturbing. Without any preaching, Project Nim passionately attacks scientific pursuits divorced entirely from ethical considerations.
As he also proved with the excellent, Oscar-winning Man on Wire (which Nim, remarkably, improves upon), director Marsh is a poet of the non-fiction form, blending archival footage, still photos (almost all of which are extremely cute), evocatively lit interviews with Nim's human friends and foes, and artful recreations into a stunning cinematic whole (cinematographer Michael Simmonds, editor Jinx Godfrey, and composer Dickon Hinchliffe make invaluable contributions). Beneath this exquisite surface lies a mighty narrative engine; Marsh's style is magically connected to his muscular storytelling sense.
Project Nim is such a great story well told that its box-office underperformance thus far is depressing. It's hard to imagine even viewers who avoid documentaries not being affected by this thought-provoking, immensely moving glimpse into human-and-animal relationships gone spectacularly wrong. Grade: A
Since John Michael McDonagh is the brother of playwright Martin McDonagh, I was hoping his debut feature as writer and director, The Guard (2011, John Michael McDonagh), would be in the same league as Martin McDonagh's first feature, In Bruges, one of the few post-Tarantino hit-man comedies that could be classified as genuinely original and soulful in its own right. But, lacking In Bruges' meaty characterizations, narrative ingenuity, and thematic depth, The Guard is instead in the unambitious, reasonably-entertaining-yet-flimsy class of your average Guy Ritchie action-comedy.
Basically a formula buddy picture pairing the most ethically shaky cop (Brendan Gleeson) in all of Galway, Ireland with a by-the-book FBI agent (Don Cheadle) to crush a drug ring, The Guard is marred by McDonagh's inability to supply the requisite comic energy; the pacing just lags.
Luckily, though, the one trait McDonagh does share with his more talented sibling is a gift for enjoyably digressive tough-guy dialogue. There are enough great one-liners and interactions here to make one curious for what McDonagh does next, in spite of his shortcomings.
The writer-director also benefits from his casting of wonderful character actor Gleeson in a showy lead part. Gleeson is a marvel in the role of a cop so hedonistic he steals acid from a car-crash victim and even ingests it at the scene of the collision. As his mismatched partner, Cheadle, a great dramatic actor, is less successful; he doesn't possess the light touch necessary for comedy (except in that scene from Ocean's Thirteen where he goes gleefully over-the-top when his thief character pretends to be a showboating stunt cyclist in order to distract Al Pacino's villain). Underneath Cheadle's genre-inappropriate glowering, one senses he still did enjoy bouncing banter off of Gleeson. I mean, who wouldn't? Grade: B-
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