Project Nim (2011)
Directed by James Marsh
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.
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What critics compared Project Nim to
Audiences with sensitivity toward animals whose wild instincts have been stifled by human intervention might see this as a cross between James Marsh’s soulful Project Nim and the terrifying sitcom chimp incident in Jordan Peele’s Nope.
To date, Marsh is best known for tougher fare, whether it be the documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim, or the dramas Wisconsin Death Trip and Shadow Dancer; one wouldn’t have imagined him at the helm of an inspiring, life-affirming tear-jerker.
The director James Marsh (of the superb documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim) and screenwriter Anthony McCarten compensate by creating a meltingly sweet romance in the early scenes, building to Jane’s declaration to Hawking’s father (Simon McBurney) that, no matter the dire prognosis, she and her love will fight the disease together.
Theory director James Marsh is actually best known for his docs (he did the lauded Man on Wire and Project Nim), but here he’s determined to string Cupid’s love bow and buff Oscar’s golden bod rather than win any kudos for scientific accuracy.
As such, it’s something of a disappointment for fans of James Marsh, director of such excellent documentaries as Man on Wire and Project Nim and the features Shadow Dancer , The King and one third of the Red Riding trilogy.
The film, directed by James Marsh (“Project Nim,” “Shadow Dancer”) and written by Anthony McCarten (“Death of a Superhero”), based on the memoir “Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen” by Jane Wilde Hawking, cunningly presents Stephen and his buddies as a bunch of adolescent misfits, newly arrived at 1960s-era Cambridge University.
Director James Marsh (better known for his documentaries, including Man on Wire and Project Nim ) used as source material the 2008 memoir, Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen , written by Hawking’s first wife, Jane, and the film is shaded, generally to its benefit, by her perspective.