Susan Granger’s review of “Project Nim” (Roadside Attractions)
Back in 1973, a Columbia University psychologist, Herbert Terrace, devised the theory that if an infant chimpanzee was nurtured like a human child and taught American Sign Language, it would then be possible to for him and other researchers to communicate with another species. His student, Stephanie LaFarge, agreed that she and her husband would raise two-week-old simian alongside their seven children in a brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was called Nim Chimpsky, named after famous MIT linguist/cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky.
But, like most primates, at the age of two, his docile disposition changed. Nim became violent with his caretakers, bruising and biting them. When he was four, he mauled the face of a female researcher, evoking memories of another victim, Charla Nash, whose entire face was viciously ripped off by her Connecticut friend’s chimp in 2009.
“To be fair to Stephanie, there was no textbook on what she could and couldn’t do with this chimpanzee,” says writer/director James Marsh (“Man on Wire”), whose convincing scene re-enactments are intermixed with archival footage and present-day interviews. So Stephanie not only breast-fed and diapered Nim, dressed and sent him to school but also introduced him to smoking marijuana.
Inspired by Elizabeth Hess’ provocative nonfiction book, Marsh postulates that it’s impossible for humans and chimpanzees to cohabit, noting that apes don’t have sufficient intelligence to comprehend and modify their far superior strength.
As for poor Nim, after Terrace irresponsibly abandoned his radical experiment, Nim was shipped back to the Oklahoma primate research center where he was born and then, for the next 20 years, dispatched to various wildlife facilities. Although he could sign 120 words, could barely communicate with other primates. In one scene, he’s saved from euthanasia by a Deadhead animal-rights activist. Isolated and lonely, Nim died of a heart attack at age 26, which is significantly younger than the average chimpanzee lifespan of 45-50 years.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Project Nim” is an extraordinarily evolved 9, proving it’s ethically and emotionally devastating to monkey with nature.
