Review: Project Nim

Project Nim is the latest documentary offering from Oscar winning director, James “Man on a Wire” Marsh. Using archived footage and the occasional dramatic reconstruction, it follows the story of a chimp named Nim Chimpsky as he is taken from his mother by behavioural psychologist, Herbert Terrace, and placed with a quintessentially ‘hippy’ human foster family with hopes of teaching Nim American Sign Language (ASL) as a human child would acquire language, shedding light on the mysteries of language acquisition. The ironically named ‘Nim Chimpsky’ is a ‘punny’ reference to language theorist, Noam Chomsky, whose theories on language acquisition as exclusively the domain of and innate within, humans, Terrace and his team sought to challenge. In the proceeding years, Nim is moved from house to house, trainer to trainer, until after 5 years the experiment is called off and Nim returned to captivity. The experiment is preceded by ‘Project Washoe’ in which a chimp was raised in a human family, acquiring approximately 350 words of ASL, which Washoe was able to combine to form some sentences. For instance on seeing a swan for the first time, he signed ‘water bird’ showing some grasp of syntax. The Nim Chimpsky project ultimately failed in its attempt to replicate the results of Washoe. The failure is attributed to poor teaching, and to Nim being consistently isolated in a sterile laboratory environment, and often confined in cages, for his entire life. Nim did not receive the same level of nurturing, affection, and life experience as Washoe, and many have suggested that this impaired his cognitive development, as happens with human children subjected to such an environment. Herbert Terrace rejected the non-experimental approach of ‘Project Washoe’ and sought to gain more ‘scientific’ results. While Nim did learn 125 signs and learnt to use them in the appropriate context Terrace concluded it was nothing resembling human language and communication.

Based on the book “Nim Chimpsky: The chimp who would be human” (Elizabeth Hess) the film considers the ethical issues and emotional experiences of both the trainers and the chimp. As the source material suggests the film is primarily focussed on the humanist animal rights issues and this is evident in the character driven emphasis and direction. The journey is moving and heart breaking as the experimenters first train Nim and then ‘abandon’ him back into the captivity when the study begins to fail and Nim’s animal nature becomes more apparent and uncontrollable. It draws startling comparisons to the recent fictionally film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, however fact, as is so often the case, is sadder than fiction. It employs the same approach as the fiction though in focusing on the animal and its journey through the meddling of humans.

My opinion of this film is very much tainted by my psychological interests. I first came across Nim in language acquisition lectures during my psychology degree. Project Nim and its predecessor ‘Project Washoe’ were important and relevant in the conclusions that could be drawn about primate and human language and how the skill is acquired, a point which I feel this documentary missed. I was not expecting nor wanting a regurgitation of what I had learnt in my lectures BUT I did feel some of the key theory and context of the study was required in terms of what the experiment was attempting to do. Instead it was simply the story of a chimp and how the hubris and arrogance of science did him great disservice to no great purpose. It seems to indicate that the rather demonised Herbert Terrace simply woke up one morning and thought ‘hey wouldn’t it be fun to try and raise a chimp like a child then see what happens!’ As the source material suggests the film is highly preoccupied with the moral and ethical implications of the study of which of course there are numerous valid concerns. It appears Nim gained very little from the attempt at humanisation but what is unclear from the documentary is the why it was attempted in the first place, the academic and philosophical context is noticeably absent. One of the trainers involved in the study remarks that she knew straight away what they were doing was important but I felt this was not elaborated on. Why was it important? How could a chimp acquiring ‘language’ possibly tell us anything about human language acquisition etc. My desire for further knowledge on the language content of experiment were not satiated but rather frustrated!

However having said this, accepting what the film itself had set out to do, which was tell the story, and not what I as the viewer wanted it to do, it did achieve this and once I left my prejudiced expectations behind I did enjoy the journey. It was poignant and moving and only moderately preachy. The human characters were not overly condemned, rather their naivety and the danger of ill considered good intentions were emphasised, which is not necessarily to the detriment of the individuals involved. The archived footage was used to great effect and pulled together well to illustrate the parts of the narrative. Some reconstructions were necessary to fill in the gaps in the footage which in most cases  were seamlessly integrated. There were however some rather unnecessary reconstructions which seemed surplus to requirement given the available footage. For instance at one point the narrative reads that ‘Nim threw a chair out of the window’ which is accompanied by a visual of a chair flying out of a window – seems like on some occasions you could rely on your imagination.

Technically, the film was very well constructed (with exception of some unnecessary reconstructions of course). There were some clever directorial touches, beautifully affective in their simplicity. During the interviews with human participants, when a character was introduced into the story the camera panned across them from the left while they signed their name in greeting. When their part in the story was complete the camera panned right until the character was removed from shot – simple but effective!

Although I did mention some frustrations with the film it did leave me thinking and filled me with the desire to get my textbooks out again. A beautiful moving documentary that is well worth the watch especially if you have no preconceptions to damage your enjoyment.

KO