Roedy Green 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.

huwdj 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.

asc85 As someone who didn't care for "Man on Wire," this director's previous film, and as someone who thinks critical response is often over-rated for documentaries, I was pleasantly surprised by "Project Nim." I thought it was the best documentary of 2011, and my wife thought it was the best film of 2011. This movie was extremely compelling from the start, and very moving throughout. I also thought it was interesting that what was "acceptable" science in the 70's has evolved into something that we look back on as something inhumane. What a difference 40 years makes! And the doctor who ran the study? What a jerk, not just in the callousness he displayed in his Nim experiment, but in the lack of ethics he had in sleeping with his students.

sfdphd I saw Project Nim right after seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the similarities are startling. Nim and Caesar are both taken from their mothers at birth, raised in human families until they get to be too aggressive, and then put into primate shelters and medical research facilities. The difference is that Caesar leads an uprising of the apes and poor Nim is left in a cage until he dies.Most of the humans in both films come off as abusive and/or ignorant of what they have done to the chimps. One or two in each film tries to do the right thing but is thwarted by the other humans. As a psychologist, I was personally appalled by the behavior of the psychologists in the film. They should have known better than to remove an infant from its mother and try to raise it within the family of another species. That's insane! Colleagues at the university should have rejected any application for funding of such research. The license of the psychologist in the film should be revoked. He not only traumatized Nim for his own purposes but also hired incompetent and inexperienced assistants to whom he was sexually attracted. It was the 1970's but that is no excuse. I believe that there actually was some interesting research data about the chimp's use of language that the psychologist dismisses. So in my eyes, he fails on an intellectually professional level as well as an ethical one. Both films are sad commentaries on the human race and the chimps seem like the better species. Would be an interesting double bill to have the fantasy feature film and the documentary shown together.