98% Project Nim

All Critics (107) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (105) | Rotten (2)

Marsh ... masterfully spins a harrowing tale of human arrogance that eventually gives way to cruelty bordering on the pathological.

Nim is as unforgettable as the treatment of him is unspeakable.

Like the experiment itself, "Project Nim" morphs from something inspiring and often humorous to a pointed and disturbing portrait of arrogance run amok. Greed and glory end up overriding decency and altruism, and it's heartbreaking to watch.

What makes this film especially engrossing is that what happened between that chimp and the humans with whom he spent his life in intimate contact turns out to be only half the story that Marsh, who directed the electrifying "Man on Wire," has to tell.

Marsh tells this story clearly and sympathetically, and he has the backlog of film and the witnesses to do so.

At times hilarious but ultimately heartbreaking, "Project Nim" is a great chronicle of the 1970s and all the nutty ideas that implies; academia in particular comes in for a hard reckoning.

A thought-proving and entirely moving portrait of human arrogance -- in general and with some very, very specific examples.

Marsh knows this material is explosive, so he presents it simply and with little sentiment (against all odds, "Nim" is frequently very funny).

For a movie about an ape, it sheds an interesting light on humanity. Animals may be wild, but only humans are cruel.

Project Nim doesn't try to reconcile its different understandings of Nim -- as an experiment, a child, a projection of various selves, and a complex, independent being.

Marsh is too content framing the entire film around the narrative spun by its subjects, rather than stamping his own authorship on the film, and as a result it lacks the power and depth of his previous work.

After watching this eye-opening documentary, one almost hopes for a rebellion of the chimpanzees like the one seen in the latest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise.

About as far as you can get from cin?ma v?rit? in its artful combination of archive material, existing documentary footage, newly filmed interviews and dramatic reconstruction, to trace Nim's strange progress.

Despite some heartbreak in the last half, this film brims with humanity and some priceless humour, too.

This many-faceted time capsule sheds little light, but buried inside it are vexing questions and the still-beating heart of a special creature.

Marsh, who made the multi-awarded Man on a Wire, takes no sides but lets the humans speak for themselves, rum lot that they are.

A corrective to all those family films and documentaries, many of them by Disney, that sentimentalise - and patronise - wild animals by trying to turn them into quirky, mentally subnormal humans.

Marsh's poignant film showcases the best and worst instincts of human nature and tells an extraordinary tale.

You end up fearing for the humans who contact him. At the same time, you feel his rage.

The chimp comes out of it well. Homo sapiens, of course, is found wanting.

In Project Nim Marsh is much less concerned with the scientific results of the study than he is with the behavior of the human beings involved, particularly Dr. Terrace whose behavior was, to put it mildly, not a credit to his species.

As a cinema experience, Project Nim was never likely to reach the heights of Marsh's Man on Wire, but the eccentricities of his story made it well worth telling.

One of the best documentaries of the year.

A documentary, stunningly watchable, about the 1970s American research team that explored the "educability" of a chimpanzee.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/project_nim/

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