Chimpanzee (2012)

Directed by: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield | 78 minutes | documentary | Voice over: Tim Allen

There are few animals on Earth that have more in common with us humans than chimpanzees. Their facial expressions, cognitive skills and behavior (both positive and negative) all convincingly indicate a close relationship and common ancestor. Like humans, chimpanzees can be empathetic, altruistic, and amazingly tender, but they can also display ferocious aggression and lapse into destructive behavior that we mainly associate with rampaging hooligans and vandals. In short, if you are looking for an animal species for a dramatized documentary with a high anthropomorphic content, chimpanzees are of course the ideal protagonists, the creative minds and marketing gurus at Disney Nature will have thought too.

The main characters in ‘Chimpanzee’ are the adorable baby chimpanzee Oscar and the robust bull monkey Freddie, the alpha male of the close-knit group in which Oscar grows up. In the first part of the film, the main focus is on the interaction between the young and still largely helpless Oscar and his caring mother, while we also see how the baby monkey tries to forge lasting bonds with a number of other group members. Like human children, young chimpanzees learn mainly through imitation and are dependent on their mother for a long time before the long path to independence is finally completed. In the background, however, lurks the dark danger of a rival chimpanzee group, ostensibly a horde of savage led by the violent Scar (where have we heard that name before?), a chimpanzee who bears the marks of battle on his scarred snout. . When the inevitable confrontation finally comes between the two chimpanzee groups, Oscar loses his mother and must survive as an orphan in the hostile jungle.

‘Chimpanzee’ is a wonderful film in many ways. The images of chimpanzees playing, eating, hunting and grooming each other, for example, are crystal clear and of phenomenal color brilliance, in fact exactly as you would expect from seasoned nature filmmakers such as Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Especially the scene in which Scar and his cronies march in the darkness of night, ominously accompanied by fierce lightning bolts and infernal thunderstorms, as a dark army of black-haired foot soldiers is magnificently filmed. The story is also compelling and in many ways unique, because the film contains examples of remarkable chimpanzee behavior that have hardly been captured in such good detail and so well on the sensitive plate before. The humanization of the chimpanzees also works well to give the print just that extra bit of drama and melancholy.

Still, in the humanization of the protagonists, ‘Chimpanzee’ occasionally goes a bit too far, giving a somewhat convulsive and forced response to the age-old contrast between cuddly heroes and sardonic villains that is so typical of the cartoons from the Disney stable. For example, Scar and his companions are invariably described as ‘a riotous mob bent on looting the fruit stock’ in Oscar’s group territory. The contrast between the ‘good’ group of Freddie and Oscar and the villainous gang of Scar is overstated, because in nature terms like good and bad are barely usable and actually non-existent. Some of the main protagonists are also guilty of hunting and eating other monkey species (chimpanzees are the only hunting and deliberately carnivorous great apes besides humans) to satisfy their hunger for meat.

Nevertheless, ‘Chimpanzee’ is a compelling and beautifully recorded jungle epic that effortlessly keeps viewers from different age groups glued to the tube for just under ninety minutes. Despite a few minor flaws, it is highly recommended.