In Project Nim we are invited to observe the tics, tweaks, and expressive details embedded in the story of a behavioral experiment as told by the social scientists who attempted to raise a chimpanzee as a human being. The camera is its own kind of cage, and director James Marsh ( Man on Wire ) frames all of the key players in the quintessentially 1970’s project as captive specimens. Each interview subject sits before the same gray background and is introduced with a showy, investigative pan; a second pan away signals that subject’s release from the narrative. Between pans the players speak to the camera, and their emotions, aversions, contradictions and language choices embellish the oral history with unintended ironies. Very quickly it becomes clear that the life of Nim Chimpsky is foremost a story about the human animal, and human behavior.
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REVIEW: Project Nim Is Partly About Chimp Behavior, But Mostly About Humans
