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Greetings again from the darkness. It is rare that we find a movie so unsettling to watch, yet admire the expertise with which it is made. Such is the case with award-winning documentarian James Marsh and his presentation of Project Nim. This is the story of Nim Chimpsky, the chimp from the 1970's who was taught sign-language and raised by humans.

The chimp's name is taken from Noam Chomsky, the famous MIT linguist. Unfortunately, the linguistic side of this story actually is quite minor compared to what really occurred. Columbia professor Herbert Terrace wanted to conduct an experiment on a baby chimp to see if it could be raised like a human baby and learn to communicate with people. He started the project by snatching the baby from its mother at two weeks of age, and then plopping it right into a large, free-spirited family with no scientific or primate-training background. Heck, no one in the family even knows sign language! The film shows how quickly Nim adapts to the pampered lifestyle and is even breast-fed by Stephanie, the mother. Nim is also exposed to smoking pot, drinking alcohol and even has limited success being potty trained. All of this is explained away with "it was the seventies". I was already bouncing between sadness and anger.

Admittedly, I am no scientist. I do know that a true science experiment or project would involve specific records and at least some type of plan ... not to mention the recording of actions, tests and progress. Instead, Professor Terrace shows up periodically for some photo ops and a hug from Nim. Poof! He is gone again. While this is never really explained in the film, one can only assume he was benefiting nicely from a huge grant, not to mention "close" relationships with a couple of his assistants. The other thing left unexplained was how Nim's mother had other babies taken from her in a similar manner. We get no detail on those "experiments".

As Nim gets older, guess what ... he gets bigger and stronger. He is difficult to control and even lashes out periodically at his caregivers, once quite violently. He is bounced from home to home and person to person. He does adapt, but he is just too strong and unpredictable to be part of human society. Finally, he is sold off to an animal rescue farm. That's just great, except initially there are no other chimps. Not a good thing for a social primate.

The whole thing is just painful to watch. I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the chimp and anger at the people ... especially Professor Terrace. His selfish, ill-conceived project negatively impacted the life of a chimp and the safety and well-being of many good-hearted people along the way.

While there was proof that Nim learned approximately 125 signs, the question remains ... did he really understand these words and phrases? Did he instead learn behavior that led to his reward? One of Nim's later day caregivers (Bob Ingersoll) visited him often at the rescue farm until at the age of 26, Nim passed away. The average lifespan of a chimp in the wild is about 45 years. So, it would appear neither the chimp or the people really benefited from Project Nim. It is, however, a well made documentary.

This James Marsh (Man on Wire) documentary examines the life of Nim Chimpsky who was raised in 70s as an experiment to show chimps can think like man. They taught him to sign, and raised him as a child with a human family. At first, it's hailed as a success. But he soon became too powerful to handle and more and more he is institutionalized. The professor finally ends the experiment sending Nim to a medical research facility. The film interviews all those people who interacted with Nim.

Sure it has a fascinating subject in the chimp Nim, but the more fascinating subjects are the humans who inhabit his life. From the professor who never saw Nim as any more than a subject. To the family who yearn to reconnect with him. And finally people who would rescue him from isolation. The camera really turns away from the animal back to all of us as a species.

This story is about a project in the 1970's that was intended to discover if it was possible to bring up a chimpanzee like a human being. The chimp, Nim, lived in a house, wore clothes and developed a sign language that could identify many things. It's a story that is simultaneously fascinating and terribly sad. Snatched from his mother just after birth he was taken under the wing of a family of rich hippies who had no actual knowledge of primate behaviour. From this early stage it is evident that the chimp displays very specific primate behaviour where he acts aggressively and belligerently to the father figure, in a way that reflects chimp behaviour in the wild where the males need to assert domination over other males from an early stage. Nim proves too much for these misguided people to deal with and from here he is passed via a number of primate specialists until he horrifically winds up in an animal testing centre, and finally in a ranch for mistreated animals, although even here Nim lived for a period in complete isolation but thankfully ended up with mates in his final years.

The very idea of a chimp being brought up in human society is a fascinating one. But it quickly becomes apparent that this experiment is doomed to failure. There is a very good reason that you do not see people keep chimpanzees as pets – they can be extremely aggressive and powerful animals. On numerous occasions carers were bitten and maimed. One woman had a hole ripped in the side of her face while another had her head repeatedly beaten off the pavement by the ape. But the over-riding feeling engendered by the documentary is one of sadness. This poor creature is let down by those who took him from his mother and decided to rear him as a human. It seems to me quite outrageous that an animal taught to communicate with people and live in a house should ever have been sent to an animal experiment centre. The blame must surely be primarily put on Professor Herbert Terrace whose project it was. Once Nim was sent to a chimp reserve he seemingly lost interest and made absolutely no attempt to save him from what could have quite easily have been an awful fate. So thank heavens for Bob Ingersoll the man who looked after Nim in the reserve and never gave up on him. Bob ultimately saved him through perseverance and considerable effort. He emerges as the human hero of the film, although the other carers from New York such as Laura and the young couple who followed her also cared deeply for the animal too, the latter two still seemed genuinely pained by how Nim was ultimately treated.

The essential message of the film is that you should not try to transport a wild animal into human society and not expect repercussions. Some of the people in the film are just guilty of naivety, dangerous as it was. As much as a story about a remarkable primate, it's a story about human stupidity, human callousness and – thanks to Bob Ingersoll – human kindness. It's overall a remarkable documentary.

This is a very good and engaging film. I will not reiterate plot as this is available in the other fine reviews, but I have to say I found the documentary both heartening and deeply sad in equal measures.

Firstly, I do agree with the other reviewers comments on futility, I do not, however, agree entirely with Professor Terrace's view that the project was a failure, though conversely I do think the project failed Nim. To expand on this I would say that the conclusion of Terrace's failure seemed to fit a classic narrow set of parameters by which you compare and judge the outcome solely on an initial and highly specific expectation of what you will achieve. To this end perhaps it failed Professor Terrace's criteria.

I think however opportunities were certainly lost. Nim seemed to interact in so many subtle and fascinating ways during the process of his teaching, and he seemed to teach a great deal to all of the assistants who gave him their care. There seemed to be so little structure from the start with regards to what was to be taught and observed and in which direction the project should be going.

The only constant seemed to be the teaching of signing, at which Nim excelled! From what I could see, regardless of whether he learnt the actions to manipulate his handlers or not, he still learnt the signs. Since it was known that the chimp could not form human speech, how was it to communicate what it had learnt and why it was using the language in this way? I found this point frustrating and dubious and an example of one person with their eye so "firmly on the prize", that they miss the importance of the process.

Importantly, everybody who was involved across the duration of the project was given a chance to clearly state the turn of events. Perspectives on this varied widely, as you would expect, as everybody brought a different set of expectations and sensibilities, but it was a mature approach which I think led to the films balanced handling of Nim's story.

All in all I found it a fascinating cautionary tale. Luckily the balance of academic ego versus humanity that twists through this story left me with hope that indeed something had been learnt from the unique life of this Chimpanzee.

This documentary from James Marsh - director of 'The Theory of Everything' - focuses on another curious chapter in twentieth century science as a baby chimpanzee was raised in a human household in the 1970s with the hope of it learning to communicate. Named Nim Chimpsky (after famed linguist Noam Chomsky), the chimp would go on to learn and use sign language, but as he grew older and scientists became wary of his dangerous strength, Nim would eventually end up abandoned and displaced. Focusing on the cruelty of removing Nim from his mother in the first few minutes, Marsh's agenda is obvious from early on as the film sets out to question ethical responsibilities in scientist research. This agenda becomes even more pronounced in the second half of the movie, however, there is nothing especially enlightening in terms of how inhumane scientific research can be. The first stretch of the film is utterly fascinating though as the scientists wax poetic about communicating with animals and as we see Nim's progress. Misguided as the scientists involved with Nim were, their ideas and goals are intriguing and as a documentary, 'Project Nim' might have played out better with their intentions in focus. Yes, the real story is with the horrors that Nim faced in post-experiment years, but it may have been interesting to learn more about those who were so cavalier with his life.

This is the true story of what happened when a baby chimp, Nim, it taken from his mother and placed with a human family. He is taught sign language by a series of carers before becoming too big and dangerous around the age of 5 at which time he is returned to the ranch he was taken from.

There is a huge amount going on in this documentary as the carers over the years are interviewed with footage from the time. What emerges will probably anger and sadden most viewers. Though I felt that Nim's carers genuinely bonded with him what emerges is a largely a tale of careless cruelty.

Equally interesting and perhaps the root cause of what happens later is the relationships between the humans. Particularly between the project leader Professor Herbert Terrance and the numerous attractive research assistants. There are several references to the power he held and exercised. Overall it has to be said he does not emerge from this film as either likable or particularly competent.

The various approaches of the teachers and carers differ so widely and even though there is much happy footage you have to wonder at the effect this had on Nim. I was left with the feeling that he eventually responded best to the people who recognised him as a chimp but still treated him as a companion within the limits this imposed.

This is a powerful film that should be shown as widely as possible and would probably be good thing to included in school curricular.

Ostensibly a documentary about the world's most famous chimpanzee, who was taught to communicate with humans via sign language during a university experiment of the 1970s, PROJECT NIM is in fact about human failings. It's another nature-themed documentary that, along with the likes of BLACKFISH and THE COVE, makes you despair for mankind.

The story starts out well, with the impossibly cute baby chimp brought up as a human. Soon, though, the behaviour of some of the "scientists" looking after Nim begins to grate; some of them are a little too involved with their subject, while others are plain creepy. Later, Nim suffers a huge betrayal, and at this point the documentary takes a downward turn into one of the most depressing ever.

Hardly a heartwarming story then, in that it focuses on misery and despair for the majority of the running time, but nevertheless an important story that serves to highlight man's inhumanity towards the world he inhabits.

Nim was raised as a human, breast fed, given clothing, a human family, a house, bed and toys. In this loving environment he naturally developed a facility for language, was toilet trained, learning dozens of sign language words, and the ability to make sentences. He formed lasting friendships with some student teachers that tried throughout their lives, with the limited power they had, to protect him. Once grown, as part of a natural adolescence that included a period of danger to his teachers as he learned his own strength and looked for a mate, he was relegated to dirty cages, and had a near escape from the animal laboratories of nightmares in which conscious live chimps are immobilized in painful brain experiments. The emotional brutality shown towards Nim, particularly by Columbia Professor Hubert Terrace, is breathtaking. Terrace's propensity to sleep with Nim's female caretakers and act out rather strange family dynamics - first with a former lover who just married someone else, and later with the "next hot new thing" - could keep Freud busy for a long time. The most human character in the movie- loving, caring, expressive, communicative, and playful - was, ironically, Nim. I'm ashamed to be part of a culture that treated such a precious soul to such cruelty over so many years. The twisted power structures that enabled men like Terrace to use Nim as a tool to seek fame, and discard him without a thought like his student amours, rankle to the core. Late in his life, Nim kept trying to escape his cold cage to the house on the property - where he still felt he belonged. One wonders what Jane Goodall would think of our brutality towards Nim. I will never forget the interview in which his loving caretaker brought him to the brutal cages where he was met with a cattle prod by yet another heartless professor. I would like to put the cattle prod right back on him. Nim, on behalf of all feeling human beings, I'm sorry.

This is a movie about a project handle wrong from the starting line. At first I was intrigued by the idea of this movie. But upon the first few minutes I realized this is just a mess, they ruined their subject, NIM, right from the beginning. The woman Stephanie did nothing to try and raise the chimp in human fashion, outside of unconditional "love". She loved him, but she didn't guide him. This wasn't about accepting him as he was, the whole idea was to bring him up "human". She let him run free with no reinforcement to correct negative behavior to others. She seemed kindly enough, but so wrong for the intended purpose. By the time he was placed in the care of another more orderly individual, all characteristic traits had been ingrained in him. As with human kids their developmental stages end at 7, I am no expert but I imagine it is much earlier with chimps. The crucial time was missed and they thus messed up an animal, suspending him in a limbo of identity neither suiting him particular well.

The movie is more about a team of people trying to salvage and place an off the track train back on it, when the damage was already done.

The first ten minutes of this painful documentary goes beyond any justice. The scientists involved in this corrupt and mindless experiment should be tried by a court of law for intentional cruelty and torture. If my tax dollars paid for this experiment then our government is corrupt with eyes wide shut. A Mother is systematically tortured by having 6 two week old infants chimps taken from her. The 6th being the title character. What was gained here was pure psychopathy. There was no need for this experiment except for vain exploration. This film gives every reason why science needs regulations. However, since this is not going to happen then will someone please point to the red button so I can give it a huge push. This is perhaps the most horrifying film I have ever seen. What were these scientist hoping to accomplish; to raise a chimp to be human? For what purpose? To serve humans? To be slaves? To fill a void? We have to be a mutation in the gravest form. I want these scientists prosecuted.

OK, so the idea going in to this film is we take a a baby chimp and test the nature versus nurture theory. Trying to see if we can "correct" their deficiency in human communication, if you will...

What instead results is indeed a spectacle to witness. Nim is indeed a remarkable chimp who was sadly the victim of human inexperience with supplying the type of care he needed and deserved. What we learn is not what a chimpanzee is lacking, but what humanity is.

I suggest watching the film with a mind towards what Nim himself must be thinking as you see his life unfold. Nim lives a chimpanzee's analog to a human life, but for a chimp, it is utterly horrifying to watch. But like any life, there are more lighthearted moments as well, such as Nim and his friend Bob with their "Stone." "Smoke." "Now." time together, which actually seemed to be Nim's best time with any humans.

All in all, this documentary of Nim's life serves as a reminder that mother nature made chimpanzees and humans their own devices for communicating and living separately. The two cannot co-exist peacefully within one habitat due to the gap in strength and cognitive intelligence. However this one chimp, Nim, came remarkably close to peaceful co-habitation and viable communication with humans and his cost for such was great.

A great and detailed recollection of the life of Nim Chimpsky, the famed chimpanzee, who was brought up amongst humans and taught sign language in order to assess the cognitive abilities of primates as well as to research into the evolution of man. Shown through the use of talking heads, vast archive footage and some very well made reenactments, "Project Nim" breathes life into the Nim in ways, which would be impossible to achieve through a normal narrative feature.

Ripped from his biological mother just weeks after birth (in the first tear-jerking scene, where the chimpanzee attempts to protect her infant from the inevitable separation), Nim initiates his life as a 'project'. The movie title rightly classifies him as such, as the animal's life is severely stigmatised by the fact, that almost no-one in his tragic life treated him as anything other than a objectified research tool, instead of what he really was: a complex, multi-layered animal with warmth, feelings and - also - layers of anger and resentment. Nim functions within the confines of human cruelty and lack of empathy, first stolen from his true mother, than abruptly taken away from his surrogate mother (when the 'experiment' is deemed to be going awry). This detachment from a loving environment brings him into hasty changes in relations between him and his human 'teachers' or caretakers. The project continues in a vast country villa, where Nim is cared for inasmuch as he serves his purpose as a subject of research: long hours spent in closed surroundings while being taught sign language and 'proper behaviour'.

When Nim's aggressive behaviours increase the project is terminated, thus again throwing Nim into a new home, this time with the company of chimpanzees and - thankfully - the only human being who can truly be called his friend: Bob Ingersoll. Despite various turns for the worse in Nim's life, Bob was the only human being never to leave him, saving him from a research facility and having his immense role in offering Nim the best possible conditions for living out the rest of his tragic life.

"Project Nim" attempts to detach itself from overly creating the narrative, instead letting the people involved in the experiment speak for themselves. And they do so with devastating effect - one by one presenting themselves in extremely negative light, especially prof. Herbert Terrace coming off as a terrible research-crazed individual lacking empathy to understand the extent of harm he caused on Nim. Despite the project's intention to bring up Nim as a human being, the chimpanzee is ripped away from two mothers, but never once is his aggressive behaviour attributed to his dysfunctional upbringing - with no mother, no caring family and a growing sense of abandonment. Non-surprisingly Bob Ingersoll, the only person to remain true towards Nim, was the sole interviewee never to complain about Nim's 'animal' side. Much as a small child who bashes out in mindless anger, there is always a reason behind such actions. However no-one from the research crew even thought about taking this into account, instead blaming it on the 'brute animal' hidden inside Nim.

Director James Marsh presents a heart-wrenching and damning insight into the concept of humanity, questioning whether the meaning of the words 'humane' and 'inhumane' are wrongly attributed and a reversal seems to be in order. Given the majority of people involved in Nim's life were destructive, inconsiderate and with the loyalty of a fly, it would seem more suited that Nim's only true friend Bob Ingersoll be called inhumane - the only person who did not act like a typical human being. Up yours humanity!

Required viewing for the betterment of our human nature. And hopefully for the betterment of the fate of animals world-wide. Should be required viewing in every school everywhere.

James Marsh's 2008 Man On Wire: compelling documentary footage from the 1970s cut with here-they-are-now talking heads. Beautifully shot and put together. Massive WTF factor.

Philippe Petit took on the full weight of both gravity and the law in a series of sanity-defying tightrope walks culminating in, or rather between, the Twin Towers. Man On Wire (title from his NYPD charge sheet) explored the relationship between art, dedication, logistics, terror, bravado, charm and getting away with it. Accompanying WTF themes were Petit's glorious English and his relationships, both of which were jaw-dropping. You leave the cinema reeling.

James Marsh's 2010 Project Nim: compelling documentary footage from the 1970s cut with here-they-are-now talking heads. Beautifully shot and put together. Massive WTF factor.

Petit is here replaced by Nim Chimpsky, reared from a baby (that's a baby chimpanzee) by a hippie family under the auspices of University of Columbia linguistics professor Dr Herbert Terrace. Nim's pretty soon removed from the influence of hippies and then plunged into an ever-ghastlier series of environments which make being given spliffs and encouraged to explore Earth Mom's bodily bits seem, if not entirely sensible, at least benign by comparison. It seems an unsurprising fable about man's inhumanity to anthropomorphically-enhanced chimp-child (who is more humane and a damn sight cuter than we are, of course). Or is he? Project Nim's WTF factor doesn't lie in Nim himself. You catch yourself, against your will, trying to construct a personality for him out of what Marsh gives you, but that's ultimately about as deep as the exploration of being human as opposed to being an animal, and the role that language plays in that, goes. Project Nim's WTF factor lies in Dr Herb's remarkable unlikeability and his team of kid assistants' extraordinary naiveté, and that was never going to make Marsh's second outing as uplifting and mind-expanding as his first.

¨I thought wouldn't it be exciting to communicate with a chimp and find out what it was thinking.¨ Director James Marsh won an Oscar for his brilliant documentary, Man on Wire, which told the story of French tightrope walker Phillippe Petit who performed his routine across the Twin Towers in New York City. That film was very suspenseful and really hooked my attention. Project Nim, is also directed by Marsh, but it doesn't have the same suspense that that film had. Man on Wire kept me interested in how Petit was able to achieve his goal, he was a very charismatic figure, and on the other hand Project Nim was kind of slow paced and didn't have any interesting characters rather than the Chimp himself. Nim (the name of the chimp) is fun to watch on screen, but it didn't work as a full length documentary for me. The story does raise several questions about how inhumane we can be at times and how our ¨scientific projects¨ have interfered in many animals lives. Questions which I already was familiar with, so this movie really didn't surprise me one bit, like say The Cove did with the slaughtering of the dolphins in Japan. That was a much more effective and eye-opening documentary. Project Nim is a well made documentary, but it really falls short compared to last year's great ones such as Inside Job, Restrepo, and Exit Through the Gift Shop. I haven't been able to watch many documentaries this year, but I heard this was on many critics' favorite lists so I went ahead and checked it out, but felt a bit disappointed with it. The bar has already been raised high for these movies (and Marsh himself is responsible for this after his excellent Man on Wire) so I really can't recommend this one as highly as I would've like too.

Hebert Terrace was a professor at Columbia University during the 70's when he came up with the idea of trying to teach a chimpanzee how to communicate like a human being. Considering human and chimp DNA is very similar he believed that it could be possible for a chimp to communicate what he was thinking if he was raised in a normal human environment. So Terrace chose a newborn chimp, separated it from his mother, named it Nim, and gave him to a human family which would be in charge of nurturing and taking care of it as if it were a normal human being. Terrace chose Stephanie Lafarge and her family to raise the animal. It was the seventies, the hippy movement, and her family was pretty much very liberal. They had no idea of how to raise the chimp and they practically let it run around everywhere. The monkey spend the first years with that family, until Terrace decided to move him to a bigger home with more experienced professors who could teach Nim how to communicate better. Nim learned several sign languages and was taught at first by Laura-Ann Petitto, but as the chimp grew up he became more dangerous. He never lost his animals instincts although he did make some progress in communication. After five years Terrace decided to end the project as he felt the research wasn't going anywhere, and Nim was sent back to a chimp refugee where he spent most of the time locked up in cages although he felt most attached to Bob Ingersoll who continued the communication process with the animal and spent time playing with it in the wild. The documentary continues to track Nim's life until his death.

The scientific project really resulted in being inhumane for the chimp because despite making some progress he never really adapted well when he was taken back with the rest of the chimps. He had been raised as a human for so long that after the project ended, Nim continued suffering the exploitations he went through. There were many people who helped Nim and really cared for him, but at the same time the entire experiment resulted in being a negative thing for the chimp. Project Nim never tries to be preachy or tell us what to do, it simply points out the facts. Marsh interviews everyone that was a part of Nim's life and shows a lot of footage that was used during the investigation. The documentary is really interesting on paper, but I really felt it dragged for some while and wasn't as entertaining as other recent documentaries. Marsh is a great director and he has great ideas, but I don't think this film really deserves an Oscar nomination. It's still a good film and if you're interested in animal behavior you might enjoy this a little more than I did. I'm more into sports and preferred the Uruguayan documentary Manyas much more, which dealt with the soccer fanatics and the way they felt for their team.

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This movie is not simply about Nim. It is about PROJECT Nim. It's the story of all the lives who were involved in this chimpanzee's journey from birth to death. It is the story of their love and their guilt.

Looking back at this experiment now it is clear what everyone lost. But do those of us who see this documentary now stand to gain something from everyone's experiences? Was that the REAL validity of the Nim experiment - to show us the carelessness with which humanity can treat the rest of the animal kingdom?

Everyone should have a similar reaction to the film, and that is perhaps because it is too narrow and biased in its telling of Nim's story. But it is more likely that there is only one conclusion to be drawn from this tragic reminder of science's cold, sterile, objective failings.

Nature or nurture? I believe it's very clear what Nim would choose.

'Project Nim (2011)' tells the tale of a chimpanzee who is taken from his mother just after birth and raised by humans, ostensibly as a human child, in an effort to prove that communication between species is possible via sign language. It basically follows the life of its eponymous animal in chronological order, making use of interviews and pre-existing footage (as well as a few mostly inconsequential recreations) to convey its narrative. It's done in a compelling way, with the varying people involved with Nim literally coming into and out of his life at various points, and it smoothly charts a story that almost seems too bizarre to be real - I mean, the parallels with 'Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)' (minus the actual ape uprising) are stark, to say the least. The picture takes you through a whole host of emotions. On the one hand, it's really interesting and, even, endearing to see a chimp raised amongst people; on the other hand, it's clearly a violation of his animal rights. Though it initially seems somewhat romanticised, the concept is rightfully criticised a number of times - not least of which being when the piece undergoes a hard-to-stomach stint in a testing lab. It's also clear that this initially cute little chimp is still an animal and, as he grows older and bigger, there's real danger surrounding him (one woman recalls how Nim viciously bit almost all the way through her cheek). Of course, none of this danger is the animal's fault; he's in a situation that he can't fully comprehend, his very nature fighting against everything he's being taught on a daily basis. The fact that the chimp does, indeed, learn to rudimentarily sign is rather impressive, though it doesn't lead to specific 'conversations' as the experiment's creator (a man who seems to be more interested in public appearances than the welfare of either his staff or the sentient being he has made a scientific subject of) seems to have hoped. What is clear, regardless of any signing, is that apes can communicate and are incredibly social animals. It seems as though they're constantly thinking about something, whether that be something to play with or something to eat, and it proves that people aren't the only beings on the planet that don't rely on instinct alone. The leader of the experiment doesn't quite seem to understand that Nim isn't human, as he expects the chimp to be able to form sentences in the same way a human does and, furthermore, behave in a generally 'acceptable' human way. Obviously, that's never going to happen; our two species' brains are just wired in different ways. However, that difference should be celebrated, not eliminated. You can't convert a chimp into a human, no matter how hard you try. Why would you even want to? In a way, that's just arrogant. A person can make genuine connections with almost any creature on the planet, but it won't be the same as it is with another person. You have to compromise, to find common ground. Some people just want everything to work the way they expect it to. If something doesn't, it's deemed a 'failure'. The only real 'failure' here is on the part of the people involved with the project. Not the so-called 'teachers' or animal handlers themselves, but those responsible for starting the thing in the first place, for tearing a baby away from its mother, for turning a life into an experiment. It's animal cruelty, for sure, regardless of its intentions. As one interviewee says, "they're already in a cage. It's all downhill from there." Cages come in many forms. In some cases, a metal box is just as repressive as a pair of shorts. The film itself seems to understand that. As often as it indulges in the sheer wonder of Nim and his typiclaly joyous relationship with those who look after him, it also exposes an underlying callousness and sense of injustice. Most of the interviews are at least tinged with regret, something which only hindsight can afford. It's as often sad as it is amusing, unafraid to show the darker side of its situation. It isn't dour, but it doesn't shy away from reality, either. It doesn't judge Nim so much as those around him, who are only ever described in their own words and therefore make their own impressions on the viewer. It feels like a very honest documentary, whether it is or not, and it's effortlessly engaging. 7/10.

Now I know that hindsight is a marvellous thing, but quite how anyone could ever have thought that playing God with another animate creature like this would ever be justifiable is beyond me. The scientists here may have been well meaning enough, but I don't see how the writing on the wall could ever have been different for the chimp whom they called "Nim Chimpsky". Wrested from his mother at birth, he is "adopted" like some sort of surrogate child by a group who are trying to prove that with a good deal of nurturing, they can teach him how to speak. They offer "Nim" all the trappings of family and become all that he knows and trusts and he reciprocates with behaviours that are loving, attention and mischievous. Then, of course, the science starts to intervene with what limited elements of the natural about this programme and soon he is incarcerated, experimented upon and downright betrayed by those who purported to "love" him. Funding issues and the more aggressive aspirations of science soon negate any potential humanity that might have applied here and predictably court battles loom as "Nim" becomes a sentient football - neglected and alone. It's harrowing to watch this, if only because the whole scientific concept is arrogant and just plain wrong. With abundant film evidence of this project available to support this eye-opening documentary it potently illustrates, frequently augmented by the contributions of these scientists themselves, more and more the short-sightedness of a project that was only ever going to last as long as the dollars kept coming in. Arguments can be made about the broader term benefits (or not) of vivisection and animal experimentation when they are being used as guinea pigs by life saving pharma, perhaps, but this deliberate attempt to play with, even manipulate, the psychological and emotional behaviour of this young ape as if he were a teddy bear is nauseating to watch. Thought provoking and distasteful as this is, it's a well structured film that actually takes quite an editorially neutral perspective with it's presentation. Unlike those rearing "Nim", we are not fed indoctrination by the film makers, just shown evidence and left to form our own judgements.

From the DVD cover (not the one shown at IMDb), I thought NIM was a horror film, probably about an Ebola outbreak in the Congo. During the first ten minutes of the film, I thought it was fiction, masquerading as a documentary with film footage from the 70s narrated by the same people 30 years later. Then I realised it was indeed a actual documentary. It mostly about the people around Nim the chimp and their petty interactions and petty and self-serving justifications for their behaviour. It is also about their strange attempt to raise a chimpanzee in isolation as a human child with middle class American values in sterile rooms made of cement blocks. They seemed shocked when Nim grew up and ceased to be compliant. Surely they had seen that happen thousands of times before. This film some day will be used to illustrate human cruelty, folly and self-deception.