Project Nim
2011 Directed by James Marsh
Synopsis
The world will be a different place once you've seen it through his eyes.
From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.
Popular reviews
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What a sad, moving and thought provoking documentary. It is hard to ignore some of the similarities between this documentary and the big budget spectacle that was Rise of the Planet of the Apes (albeit the films have wildly different conclusions). James Marsh was either very lucky or very tenacious to be able to get contributions from all the key personnel that impacted on Nim's life as well as getting access to some wonderful (and I mean that in both the good and bad sense) archive footage of the many lives he lived. The nature vs. nurture scientific study he was practically born into may well have had noble intentions for some of the scientists and teachers involved (it is…
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Project Nim is like Au hasard Balthazar, as an innocent creature is tossed around by the whims of humans, only it's all real and its hero isn't a doleful donkey but a chimp who smokes weed. Nim is wrenched from his mother at birth and adopted by an annoying hippy, who breastfeeds him for two years. It's all part of a plan, put in place by a Columbia professor, to see whether a chimp - raised as a human - can be taught to construct sentences in sign language. But personal conflicts and simmering jealousies throw the (questionable) venture into disarray, and Nim is variously abused, disorientated and admonished for his animalistic behaviour, as he passes through the hands of…
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Wanted something quick to watch between getting home from work and then going to see Iron Man 3 on Friday evening. This was on the planner, thought it would do the trick. It sort of did.
I think because I already knew about Project Nim, I wasn't quite so in a rush to watch a documentary on it. I'd read about the controversy around the way he was raised a long time ago; how Nim was less like the subject of a particularly well controlled scientific study, more like the victim of a hippy's whimsical bright idea, that basically ended up not proving or disproving anything.
In the book The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings, he talks a little about…
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'Project Nim' tells the life story of Nim Chimpsky (what a name!), a chimpanzee who could use sign language. As well as showing how Nim changed as he grew from a cuddly pet to a strong and often dangerous creature, this documentary examines the impact the titular chimp had on those who came into contact with him.
The story itself is deeply moving and troubling in many ways. A victim of incompetence from almost everyone who had any control over his life, Nim never seems to truly belong, and it is this aspect of the documentary that is most successful, in its portrayal of what is almost an existential crisis shown through the eyes of a chimpanzee. Respectably, the makers…
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Doc that showed an experiment in the 70's to see if a chimp, Nim, could be taught to communicate with humans via sign language. So, some evil bastards take a chimp baby away from his screaming mother and give it to a family who are meant to bring it up as a human child. Things start badly when this family are a bunch of hippy dickheads that can't even use sign language, give the monkey reefers and beer and the matriarch is more interested in how the monkey wanks himself off and seems to want to shag it.
The head of this experiment, a bloke, pushing 40 with a shocking combover thinks the chimp deserves better and would prosper if… -
"I breast fed him for a couple of months, it seemed completely natural"
Sorry...what? Sounds like maternal bestiality to me Mrs liberal tits.
The creepiness doesn't end there with the head of the project 'combover Herb' promoting his perky 18 year old protege to director of education and eventually having a brief affair.
The real life version of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' but with less rising and more exploitation.
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Amazing documentary, both in style and subject, following Nim though his life is as much about him as it is about the people that surrounded him and gives you many perspectives on the human animal relationship which has many nuanced variations.
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Utterly compelling in every way.
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Brilliant/heartbreaking documentary demonstrating the human abuse caused by 'well meaners' rather than 'do-gooders' in the name of science. Project Nim shows the utter detrimental long term effects human 'carers' can do when assuming that they are humans/ use their own anthropomorphic criteria on an animal that will become 6 times as strong as a human for 'a scientific project for five years' and not respecting that apes (in this case chimpanzees) are their own amazing species. Bob Ingersoll is the only human ape that comes out well in this: roll on the real rise of the planet of the apes: Humans are a failing species, especially failing their closest living relatives.
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Wanted something quick to watch between getting home from work and then going to see Iron Man 3 on Friday evening. This was on the planner, thought it would do the trick. It sort of did.
I think because I already knew about Project Nim, I wasn't quite so in a rush to watch a documentary on it. I'd read about the controversy around the way he was raised a long time ago; how Nim was less like the subject of a particularly well controlled scientific study, more like the victim of a hippy's whimsical bright idea, that basically ended up not proving or disproving anything.
In the book The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings, he talks a little about…
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Just leave them alone!
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Project Nim is an entertainment but heartbreaking documentary about Nim, a chimpanzee who learn to communicate using sign language. An example of the unpleasant (but neccesary?) relationship between science and animals.
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"I breast fed him for a couple of months, it seemed completely natural"
Sorry...what? Sounds like maternal bestiality to me Mrs liberal tits.
The creepiness doesn't end there with the head of the project 'combover Herb' promoting his perky 18 year old protege to director of education and eventually having a brief affair.
The real life version of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' but with less rising and more exploitation. -
Project Nim: How To Teach A Monkey To Be A Complete Dickhole.
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A fascinating story, told with skill - the reconstructions are really well-shot, and the interviews feature several moments of unwitting self-incrimination that reminded me of Errol Morris films; people trying to work out in real time if what they did was wrong. For all the amount of screen time Nim has, he's the ultimate unknowable subject; the film is all about how humans look at other animals and see themselves.