Chimpanzee

 

Oscar material

I saw ‘Chimpanzee’ yesterday on opening day.  For the first week of the film’s run a portion of ticket receipts are going to Chimpanzee research.  Since Jane Goodall asked, I wanted to support the movie.  The trailer looks like it is a semi-documentary and for once that’s accurate.  The photography is stunning and it’s worth the price of admission just to see African jungle on the big screen through the lens of these photographers.  If you saw ‘Avatar’ you might have been enthralled by how imaginative it was.  But, ‘Chimpanzee’ shows (for just one example) bio-luminescent mushrooms glowing at night making the dense forest seem surreal.  As is often the case, a gifted nature photographer can show the incredible diversity and beauty of the natural world, a world we rarely if ever glimpse.

The movie is about Oscar, a photogenic baby chimp.  The film makers followed his troop in their jungle territory and over time captured true-live drama.  With clever editing, soundtrack, and narration by Tim Allen, a story emerges.  Casting with baby chimps gives the film a head start, but the story is good enough to keep viewers following along.

Watching Oscar and his troop reminds me how little we’ve known about our near relatives in the animal world.  This film shows off how precarious life is for a baby chimp, even one lucky enough to be born in a perfect environment.  It takes a village, so to speak, for a chimp to learn how to survive in the wild.  Learning life skills is hard work requiring patience, strategy, and co-operation.  Every school kid in America should notice that, and so should we all.

Back in the 1950s, when American knowledge of chimpanzees was limited to J. Fred Muggs on the Today show, there were estimated to be a million chimpanzees in the wild.  Now there are probably 200,000.  Our human population during the same period exploded, and that fact has done the most harm to wild habitat for chimps (and other animals).  I hope you’ll see this film this week!