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.

Where does a chimpanzee fit in the scheme of nature in relation to human beings? If you'll pardon me a crude analogy: If the evolutionary chain were a movie theater and humans occupy the front row, primates might place two rows behind us. We are a tiny fraction away from having the same DNA and when we look at them we can see that they are, basically, a savage version of what we use to be. Yet, in their eyes you can see that their thinking patterns must match ours in some fashion. What that fashion is exactly remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. What can they learn? Can they learn the way humans can? Are they communicating on our scale? Can they be taught from a young age and adapt just like a human child? These questions were the focal point of a now-legendary experiment begun in 1973 and headed by a Columbia psychology professor named Herbert Terrace to see if an infant Chimpanzee could be raised in a normal human household and could be taught to communicate. The chimp was forcibly taken from his mother mere days after birth and given the name Nim Chimpsky (we learn the heartbreaking fact that this was the sixth child that this particular mother has had taken away and we see her in silhouette mourning the loss). Nim first lived in a brownstone in Manhatten with a married couple and their children. He wore clothes, he played with the pets; his human mother let him drink beer and smoke pot (this was the early 70s). She even breast-fed him. Most importantly, he was taught functional amounts of sign language. Nim's education in sign language was at the core of the project, even though one of the family members curiously points out that no one in the family was actually fluent in sign language to begin with.The documentary Project Nim follows the progress of that experiment in reenactments and still photographs, but mostly through eyewitness testimony from the researchers who spent time working with Nim during the project. Some of the footage that we see might fit right in on a television sitcom or one of those shows from the 60s like "Daktari" or "Gentle Ben". We see little Nim rolling around on the floor playing with the kids, the dog and then the cat. It is all very cute, but one can't watch the footage and not be concerned. Nim, after all, an animal with violent tendencies.Nim, through his training, seems perfectly happy, which is ironic when you compare him with some of the humans that are caring for him. Many of whom seem to have deep personality flaws. Dr. Terrace seems to evoke the quality of an father who raises a child from a distance, and the research assistants, Stephanie and Laura-Ann Petitto seem willing to forgive some of Nim's more aggressive tendencies and outbursts as he approaches maturity.What becomes abundantly clear as Nim grows is something that Terrace doesn't seem to have considered: Chimps are cute and cuddly as babies, but as adults they are unmanageable. They don't know their own strength which is five times that of a human. We see talking-head interviews with many of the key participants in the experiment who show us scars from having been attacked and bitten by Nim during their time with him. One, in particular, was the most loving of all of Nim's parents and received a nasty bite through her cheek, not during a moment of violence but seemingly out of the clear blue sky.I don't know if it was the intention of James Marsh, the director, but humankind isn't presented well at all in this movie. Nim is only a product of his circumstances - pulled away from his mother to spend the first half of his life in the spotlight, but when that spotlight is gone, what then? He's like a flavor-of-the-month celebrity who's light faded and everyone moved on to something else. So, knowing what we know about primate behavior, we kind of sense where the movie is going. Nim, through his work with the researchers eventually learned some 150 words of sign language and proved that a chimp could be taught. However, as Nim grows he becomes more aggressive and his wilder nature takes over and the story takes a turn that is achingly sad. He can't live with humans because he's too aggressive. He can't live with other chimps because he's been raised in the manner of a human being. Nim's contribution to scientific research has been incredible, but rather than being celebrated, he was shut away for the rest of his life and more or less forgotten. Thanks for nothing.

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.

Compared to such superstars of animal linguistics as Alex the talking parrot and Koko the signing gorilla, the late Nim Chimpsky (1973–2000) was very much a lesser light. All the same, his eventful early life has provided filmmaker James Marsh with the material for a fine documentary, as intense and involving as a first-rate fiction film; this one plays like it might have been scripted by Arthur C. Clarke (from a first draft by J.D. Salinger) and directed by Herzog ("Kaspar Hauser") or Truffaut ("Wild Child"). The story begins when Columbia psychologist Herb Terrace prevailed on a colleague (and ex-girlfriend), Stephanie LaFarge, to add a chimp to her already blended family of two adults, seven children and a German shepherd, raise him like a human child (which would include breast feeding) and teach him American Sign Language; the goal was to test Noam Chomsky's well known hypothesis that only the human brain could generate grammatical speech. Nim Chimpsky (get it?) spent a year or two in the loosey-goosey LaFarge household on the Upper West Side—my wife used to see him stumping around the 'hood in diapers with his overprotective minders—then, when it appeared that his sign language skills were being neglected, he was sequestered with Terrace's assistant in a disused mansion in the Bronx and brought down to Columbia for classroom catchup sessions. By this time, he had grown into an unruly adolescent with long, sharp fangs, a short attention span and the strength of many men. When he attacked one of his sign-language tutors and tore her cheek open, Terrace shut the project down, and Nim was banished to the primate research center in Oklahoma where he was born. Terrace added insult to this act of treachery by publishing a book in which he portrayed Nim as a "brilliant beggar" who mimicked his teachers to get rewards—hugs, snacks and the occasional puff on a joint. Except for supervised outings (and a few brief escape attempts), Nim spent the rest of his life behind bars.Since Nim was both an experimental subject and, at least for a few years, a chimp célèbre in his own right, Marsh had plenty of video clips to choose from; only purists will object to a couple of Errol Morris–style reenactments, and the interviews with the participants, thirty-odd years later, are fascinating. Terrace, especially as seen in the archival footage with his slicked-down comb-over and caterpillar mustache, makes a fine comic villain; his self-serving shiftiness contrasts amusingly with Nim's innocent seductions. We can empathize with Terrace's former assistant, Laura Pettito (now apparently a well known neuroscientist, though it isn't mentioned in the film), as she recalls how a brief, much-regretted affair with her boss compelled her to quit the project. Stephanie LaFarge comes across as a good-hearted, spacey 70s mom, the kind of character Dianne Wiest used to play; standouts among the supporting cast include Joyce Butler, a strong-minded alpha female who discouraged Nim from biting (biting her at any rate) by nipping him on the ear; and Bob Ingersoll, an affable Deadhead at the Oklahoma center who became Nim's BF and protector in his later years. The film wisely sidesteps the whole Chimpsky-Chomsky debate about animal communication, a debate that continues to sputter only because the Chomskyites keep moving the goalposts; I think most viewers would agree with something Bob Ingersoll said in an interview (don't think it's in the film) to the effect that the difference between Nim's signing "Stone smoke now!" and anyone else's saying "Dude, let's spark up a fatty!" is pretty much academic.