Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist

Expected much better from Executive Producer James Marsh ("Man on Wire") than this shallow dive into Dian Fossey's fascinating life and awful murder.

There is no suspense since the series starts with the murder and reveals the suspects early on. The filmmaker loses no time before she begins assaulting the viewer with lingering, repetitive and graphic shots of the mutilated corpses of several of Fossey's beloved mountain gorillas.

The film relies far too heavily on inept dramatizations. Interview subjects are nicely lit and all are interesting, but the director does them a disservice by using too many soundbites in which they essentially repeat themselves and each other.

Despite a deep interest in the subject, we gave up halfway through the series out of boredom and distress over the inclusion of so many stomach-turning shots of the damaged bodies of these magnificent primates.

If you want to know more about Dian Fossey's life, personality and contribution to the science, watch "Gorillas in the Mist," Michael Apted's magnificent 1988 film, rather than this badly made and exploitative series. (And, while I'm thinking of it, if you want to see masterful dramatizations, check out Apted's work with cinematographer Maryse Alberti in "Incident at Oglala.")

This is a pretty wild story and I'd recommend it to anyone. I didn't know about Dian Fossey before watching this, but she's basically the person who saved the Eastern Gorilla. She started a research center to live with them and helped rehabilitate their image from King Kong to a creature that is actually playful and gentle despite its size. She learned how to communicate with them, and generations of researchers learned from her. Definitely somebody worth knowing about.

This is also a whodunnit story of her death that goes through several twists and turns. It stays interesting through all 3 episodes and I looked forward to continuing my journey through them.

It isn't just talking heads either, they have a lot of contemporaneous video and photos because she was involved with National Geographic back in the day and they sent filmographers. The interviews are pretty interesting too, though.

The series is great and absolutely worth a watch. If you're already familiar with the story (as I was), there will still likely be plenty of details to keep your attention. There's a lot of original film and photos, which makes it much more immersive than your typical documentary. I'm also glad they didn't try to sugar-coat the imagery, but allowed the user to get a glimpse of the gravity and savagery of what was happening at the time.

The only problem was the series's constant focus on Fossey's murder. Obviously it's relevant, but for someone like this the focus should be on what she accomplished. They start out the series with the murder, and it runs like a murder mystery story through the whole series. They even dedicate the first 2/3 of the last episode to it. It's kind of sad to see such an incredible story reduced to a crime drama, and I truly would've preferred they had cut virtually all of it.