Dallas IFF: PROJECT NIM Review

As with Man on Wire, his previous documentary, director James Marsh brings recent history to vivid life in Project Nim, which unfolds as the saga of a lone chimp against implacable human foes.

Naturally, the humans didn't mean for anything bad to happen to Nim Chimpsky, as the chimpanzee came to be called, when they snatched him from the arms of his mother two weeks after he was born. T'was curiosity that threatened to kill the beast.

The film, inspired by the book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Susan Hess, begins with Dr. Herbert Terrace, a professor of behavioral psychology at Columbia University in New York, who wanted to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use sign language to communicate his thoughts to humans. 'Wouldn't that be fascinating?' he theorizes, and so begins the years-long journey of Nim from a primate research center in Oklahoma to the crowded Manhattan brownstone of Stephanie LaFarge and her family in 1973.

Stephanie, a psychology student of Dr. Terrace, had recently married and was still in the process of merging her family with her new husband and his kids. (Altogether, there were seven children.) In retrospect, it may seem quite foolhardy for her to add a chimpanzee to the unstable brood, especially since she had no training or experience with chimps.

As she says, though: "It was the 70s!"

Espousing a liberal, hippie philosophy, she welcomes Nim into her family. The chimp promptly begins to drive a wedge between Stephanie and her husband, a poet. The chimp follows in the footsteps of the rambunctious, undisciplined children, doing whatever he wants to do, supported by Stephanie, his ever-loving surrogate mother. In most respects, Nim was treated as a member of the family.

But Dr. Terrace felt that Nim was not making sufficient progress in learning sign language. Stephanie, it turns out, did not much care if Nim ever learned more signs; she was happy enough to have a very special child. Dr. Terrace, however, had created the project for a specific purpose, and he insisted upon a different course of study for Nim.

Around the same time, Dr. Terrace secured the use of Delafield, a large estate in upstate New York, and had Nim moved there under the care of Laura-Ann Petitto, an 18-year-old psychology undergraduate. Though young, Laura-Ann was very talented in teaching Nim, and her new course of study resulted in fantastic progress for the chimp.

The more progress that Nim made -- his vocabulary multiplied at an amazing rate -- the more publicity that accrued via newspapers and television reports. At the same time, however, Nim began displaying more of his animalistic nature. He was no longer the small, cute chimp; his size and, especially, his ability to hurt his teachers by biting or scratching them, grew just as fast as his progress with sign language.

What to do with a chimp who is growing more potentially dangerous every day, especially after the initial goals of the project have been achieved?

That's the crux of the film, and by that point we're well along in sympathizing with Nim's situation. It's not as though he asked to be adapted and treated as a member of a human family. What, then, are the limits for humans who use animals for scientific or medical experimentation?

Project Nim raises all kinds of questions by telling one story, that of a chimpanzee whose only crime is that he is true to his nature.

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Bob Ingersoll, who played an important role in Nim's life, participated in a Q&A session following the screening of the movie at the Dallas International Film Festival.

Project Nim will have a theatrical run in the U.S. through Roadside Attractions beginning on July 8. Lionsgate has the home video rights, and HBO has the broadcast rights.