3 ½ stars (out of four)
There is still so little that man knows about the world around him and the multitude of species that inhabitant it, and yet the most perplexing and elusive of those creatures may just be himself. Project Nim, a new documentary from James Marsh, follows a group of scientists’ attempt to teach a chimpanzee sign language in the 1970s but the film is as much about the many eccentric individuals who were attached to the project as it is the chimp.
The founder of the project, Professor Herbert Terrace, sought to explore the linguistic capabilities of primates by raising a newborn chimp named Nim as though he were human. The project would put to test many of the “Nature vs. Nurture” ideas that were on the cutting edge at the time. If Nim were taught American Sign Language from an early age, would he be able to adopt communicative language and grammar the way a human child does?
Nim’s pseudo-mother and first teacher was Stephanie LaFarge, a former hippie who signed onto the project despite her lack of experience raising a chimp. As her daughter, Jenny Lee, explains with a laugh, “It was the 70s.” Stephanie took to heart Prof. Terrace’s request to raise Nim as if he were human and Nim lived and interacted with her family as though he were a part of it. She breast-fed him, exposed him to alcohol and marijuana, and allowed him to play freely in the yard all day with little to no attempt at scientific control. She rejected Prof. Terrace’s unnatural attempts to organize or regiment the chimp’s life.
Believing Nim’s bohemian life with Stephanie was not conducive to the scientific aims of the project, Terrace removed Nim from her house and placed him in the care of the first of many new teachers. Nim’s sign language curriculum was picked up Laura-Ann Pettito, an attractive young grad student whose affair with Terrace, Terrace explains, had no effect on the integrity of the project.
Among Nim’s other caretakers was Bob Ingersoll, an aging Deadhead who recalls fondly his time with Nim as the best of his life. One of the last to join Project Nim, Ingersoll was perhaps the only researcher who truly cared about the animal; his attachment to Nim seems genuine and he fights for ethical treatment of the chimp long after the project is over.
At the center of all of these people is Nim himself who is described by several of the film’s interviewees as a creature of endless charm. These comments are made in spite of Nim’s tendency to bite and even hospitalize nearly everyone on the project. Nim’s constant exposure to people leant him an uncannily humanlike personality but in his heart he remained a wild and dangerous animal.
Director James Marsh’s last film, the Academy Award winning documentary Man on Wire (one of my favorite films of 2008) was about a daredevil who walked along a hire-wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. With Project Nim, he again finds a fascinating story about the strange things people will do to leave their mark on the world. He seamlessly integrates dramatizations with archival footage to tell the story of Nim’s life, which nearly ends in a medical testing facility for hepatitis vaccines. Marsh’s shot selection is evocative; each clip is carefully chosen to convey the complex relationships between Nim and his human companions.
The language aspect of Project Nim is said by Terrace himself to have failed and the project’s results remain inconclusive. Was Nim using language or simply memorizing signs? The difference is irrelevant to several of the project’s participants who, to this day, marvel that they were able to successfully communicate with an animal. The science of the project was doomed from the start – Stephanie LaFarge’s insistence on raising the chimp without the intrusion of scientific records ensured as much – and with each new participant, the project’s results were skewed by the biases and emotions of its researchers.
The failings of the project, however, provide a fascinating if unintentional study of humans that James Marsh brings to life in Project Nim. He examines the emotional attachments people formed with Nim and their inevitable heartbreak when they are reminded that he is just a chimpanzee and not a member of that strange species known as humans.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/17/11
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