I knew going in that this was a documentary about a chimpanzee that was trained to communicate in sign language. As such I thought it would mainly be about the scientific data gathered from the experiment and the consequences for our understanding of language. Instead, this film is focused on how the entire project is unethical from its very conception and how almost everyone involved in it seems to have regretted it. That makes it a far more powerful documentary than I had expected.

This film covers the life of Nim Chimpsky, so named because he was lent to Herbert Terrace of Columbia University as part of an experiment to test if chimpanzees can learn language if raised in a human environment. He was placed as an infant with a human surrogate family and raised alongside human siblings. However the surrogate mother did not provide a highly structured learning environment and it was only after the involvement of a graduate student Laura-Ann Petitto that Nim began to learn sign language in a more systematic manner. After Petitto left the project however, the subsequent handlers had difficulty with Nim as he grew bigger and more aggressive. Eventually Terrace called for an end to the project after he seriously injured a handler and returned him to the sanctuary where he was born. As he had never been in contact with other chimpanzees, Nim had difficulty socializing with the other animals and had grown used to living a relatively easy and luxurious life with a human family. But worse would come as the sanctuary ran out of money and sold him and other chimps to a medical testing laboratory.

We’ve all seen plenty of horror stories about animals who end up being used for experiments but the emotional impact of seeing a real life instance of it that happened to a real chimpanzee is something else entirely. I’m especially astounded that it could have happened to an animal as well known as Nim who was featured in the national news and had developed close relationships with many people. Yet in the end when the funds dried up and his usefulness came to an end, he was still discarded. There is no question to my mind that the experiment was unethical from the beginning. By raising Nim as a human child, everyone involved and especially Terrace was making an implicit promise to him that he would be well treated his entire life. Yet it seems clear that they had no intention of providing Nim with the same level of care he had grown accustomed to as adult chimpanzees truly are dangerous to humans. Terrace even seems to have been negligent in the scientific aspects of the project, providing little direction and organization but happily appeared with Nim for the purpose of filming interviews and promotional videos. He even seems to have been romantically involved with the students he hired to run the project for him. The whole thing is a complete farce and Terrace is scum.

This documentary does start with some reenactments which seem unnecessary but its interviews and usage of old footage is pretty great. I was especially impressed by how the producers were able to cajole the interviewees into admitting their part in this tragedy. I did not like that the film is relatively light on the scientific aspects of the project. Director James Marsh seems interested in persuading the audience that Nim’s progress in learning sign language was impressive. The consensus however seems to be that Nim’s performance fell below expectations especially as this was supposed to be a replication of an earlier experiment with another chimpanzee Washoe who learned far more signs and had much better communications skills. She was also better treated and lived out her entire life on the same university campus. Still regardless of his scientific value, Nim did not deserve being abandoned in the way that he was by Terrace and the other people involved in this project.

This was one documentary that did not turn out in the way that I expected and it exposes truly shameful behavior on the part of the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry. It is good to be reminded that real life sometimes really is that shitty. I would agree that using animals to test medical products to ensure that they are safe for human usage is regrettable and should be minimized whenever possible but I regard it as a necessary evil. Nim in particular however should not have been used in that way due to how he was raised. Anyway I believe that testing using chimpanzees in the US has since been phased out though there are still difficulties in placing the remaining animals in suitable sanctuaries.