Project Nim directed by James Marsh (2011)
Nim is a chimpanzee that shortly after his birth was taken away from his mother to live with a family while being raised as a human child. At the families home, Nim was breast-fed by the mother, was allowed to run wild through the house, smoked pot and drank, all in the name of of science. The experiment was to see if Nim could be taught to communicate using sign language. The problem was that he wasn’t being taught. Throughout the film we see Nim be passed from person to person, place to place, all for reasons that seem cruel and inhuman. Director James Marsh gave us, arguably one of the best documentaries of all-time, with Man on Wire. The difference between these two for me was Man on Wire was filled with emotion. I felt invested in the story, and even though I knew much of the outcome I was still on the edge of my seat throughout. With Project Nim I felt very little emotion. Sure I felt bad for Nim, hoping that he would just end up with someone who could take care of him and give him a semi-normal life. But we move fairly quickly through each of the caretakers and never really get to know the true motivations of many of them. I believe that many people, mainly those with strong attachments to animals, will find this to be a great documentary, if not extremely disturbing, but I just wasn’t invested enough to place this among the greats.
