Director, James Marsh, has given us documentaries, such as MAN ON WIRE, that present complicated, but extraordinary characters accomplishing things most people would never attempt. His newest film, PROJECT NIM, is no less incredible and he sent this letter to tell you why.
To All Violet Crown Cinema Patrons and Supporters
A brief note from filmmaker James Marsh
I’m really pleased that my new film Project Nim will be shown at Violet Crown Cinema. I shot my first feature film The King in Austin in the summer of 2004 and I have great memories of the film community in Austin and the warmth and friendliness of the people in your very cool city.
Project Nim is an unusual proposition for a film. We’ve tried to apply some of the principles and techniques of a traditional film biography to the life story of animal. In the film, we follow an individual chimpanzee through infancy and adolescence to adulthood, all the while witnessing both his emerging behavior and its impact on the humans who lived around him. There are many intriguing behavioral overlaps between humans and chimpanzees explored in the film but it’s the differences between the species that really shape Nim’s life with us and determine his unhappy fate.
As infant Nim grows up, much of his behavior seems familiar, often surprisingly and amusingly so. He laughs, he cries, he craves attention and affection, he is a thrill seeker and a hedonist with a penchant for illegal drugs. He has an extraordinary memory and never forgets anyone he meets. He can be empathetic, affectionate and mischievous.
But from very early on, his own unique nature also asserts itself. His first ‘mother’, Stephanie LaFarge, is quite shocked by ‘the wild animal in him’ and this continues to emerge powerfully as he grows. If you lack confidence in his presence, look at him the wrong way, or otherwise disrespect him, he will attack and hurt you. Having made his point, he’ll probably apologize and try to make it up to you.
The paradox and heartbreak for the humans around Nim is that he can scratch and bite people whom he seems to genuinely like. The heartbreak for Nim is that he cannot be any other way and as he gets stronger, this will guarantee his virtual imprisonment. In the film, we get to know an individual chimpanzee whose baffled reaction to his increasing confinement can stand for the many many thousands of chimpanzees, equally individual and distinct in character, who find themselves under our control in the same or worse situations.
Notwithstanding the dedicated scientific study of Nim, in the course of the film we often discover that Nim studies and understands us better than we understand him. And how many of the characteristics that we recognize in Nim reflect part of our own genetic endowment? Our murderous aggression, our social hierarchies, our need for hedonistic diversion and sensation – are these hard wired in our species as well?
The humans in the film are consciously holding up a mirror to Nim in order to understand him but we must also ponder the mirror he holds up to us in return. Hence the film’s interest in the purely human behavior that Nim exposed in his friends, companions and oppressors.
After I finished my work, I was still vexed about the propriety of the final statement we hear in the film which posits the idea that chimps have a capacity and indeed an instinct for forgiveness. I didn’t want to insult Nim with another misleading human projection after so many others had negatively impacted his life. But I realized that the film had already discovered many examples of Nim’s forgiving nature and the person offering the statement, a research vet who by his own admission had caused much suffering and pain to chimpanzees in the name of science, seems both well qualified to know and at this point in the story, the most in need of – and deserving – of the animals’ grace.
I really hope you get to see the film and are able to ponder some of the many fascinating aspects of this unique story for yourselves.
And on a personal note, keep Austin weird, please.
-James Marsh, December 2011
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