MIFF Day 6
Truth is stranger than fiction...
PROJECT NIM
The story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee taken from his mother at birth and raised as a human, taught sign language and then abandoned when that experiment ran its course. This all happened before ethics boards I'm assuming, since most of what took place was adhoc and ill-considered. He's first placed in a family but given no structure for learning, though he's given pot. Then he's taken away, raised by others and taught to sign properly, but they don't understand he's a wild animal until he starts assaulting them, almost killing two research assistants. The plug is pulled on the project and Nim is returned to a cage where he's miserable. From there he's sold to an animal testing lab, only to be rescued by well-meaning but completely clueless animal activists who lock him up in another cage. Finally, he lives out his final days with a few other chimps and while it's not perfect, it's pretty good. The story is crazy, and a lot of the people involved are crazy too. There's some pretty damning admissions, and disturbing footage of animal testing. And all in all it's a very sad story of the cost on an animal of the pursuit of knowledge.
BUNCE
A short film written by Stephen Fry, immortalising his debt to a boy named Bunce who once upon a yesteryear helped a young Stephen Fry indulge his love of sweets. It's funny to see the now elder Fry play a headmaster telling "himself" off, and the writing is as sharp as you'd expect from such a wit. Good fun.
THE GUARD
A showcase for how awesome Brendan Gleeson is (though The General proved that point over a decade ago), The Guard is the story of Gerry Boyle, the local cop in a small village that is suddenly the focus of a major operation to catch some drug smugglers. Gerry glides through, making inappropriate comments, sampling the wares and cleverly disguising the fact that he's a lot smarter than everyone else. Don Cheadle as the FBI agent sent across is just there to be the straight man, but he plays it very well. It's a very Irish sense of humour that pervades, dry and black, with wall to wall laughs. It's out in a week or two, so go check it out, it's a cack.
INTO ETERNITY
In Finland, it's been decided that the way to deal with their nuclear waste is to build a massive underground bunker and store it there, filling it back up with rock and sealing it for the next 100,000 years. This doco is meant to be a message to anyone who comes upon the site and imagines it's anything other than one of the most deadly places on earth and tries to excavate. I personally found the whole thing rather patronising and foolish, as it's structured and presented as if speaking to little children, telling fairytales about how deadly the place is. I was told after the screening by someone that's it's fairly normal behaviour for the Northern Europeans, no ambiguity. So it's probably just me. But still, I found it a ponderous and pretentious piece of work, though the information within was genuinely grim and thought provoking.
TABLOID
I had no idea what to expect from this one. All I knew was it was Errol Morris. The man has a talent for finding odd subjects, and this one is out there. Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen, falls in love with a mormon who promptly vanishes on her. She hires detectives to find him, and discovers he's in England. He didn't vanish, he just went on mission. So she goes over there, kidnaps him, straps him to a bed and they have sex for three days. At least, that's what's alleged. Her version is that he left willingly, then had guilt over the sex, convinced he would be excommunicated from the church, and thus lied to cover himself. The British tabloids got a hold of the story and ran with it. The whole thing is so fantastical you couldn't make it up, especially once more and more of Joyce's past catches up with her. Allegations fly back and forth, with both sides claiming their evidence has in the subsequent years been lost. The film falters as it shifts into Joyce's second run with notoriety, when she has her dead dog cloned in Korea, but it recovers. The whole thing in incredibly weird and funny, but you do feel a little dirty when you laugh. There's a level of exploitation going on here that makes the film's title very appropriate.
OPERATION 8
New Zealand has a reputation as being one of the most progressive and sensible countries around. This solidly constructed documentary annihilates that image. In 2007 the police raided and arrested an eclectic group of activists. Everyone from anarchists to indigenous rights activists were charged with terrorism offenses and locked up. But the evidence didn't stack up, so the Crown refused to prosecute. That wasn't the end though, and it's still being dragged through the courts to this day. It's a depressing vision of a nation, with police informers caught inciting crime, a retired undercover police officer admitting to fabricating evidence and claiming a culture of deception in the police, as well as private security firms spying on and infiltrating activist groups to protect commercial interests. It's a sad and pathetic state of affairs, but with people are trying to justify their paychecks, it seems unlikely sanity will prevail in the near term.
PROJECT NIM
The story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee taken from his mother at birth and raised as a human, taught sign language and then abandoned when that experiment ran its course. This all happened before ethics boards I'm assuming, since most of what took place was adhoc and ill-considered. He's first placed in a family but given no structure for learning, though he's given pot. Then he's taken away, raised by others and taught to sign properly, but they don't understand he's a wild animal until he starts assaulting them, almost killing two research assistants. The plug is pulled on the project and Nim is returned to a cage where he's miserable. From there he's sold to an animal testing lab, only to be rescued by well-meaning but completely clueless animal activists who lock him up in another cage. Finally, he lives out his final days with a few other chimps and while it's not perfect, it's pretty good. The story is crazy, and a lot of the people involved are crazy too. There's some pretty damning admissions, and disturbing footage of animal testing. And all in all it's a very sad story of the cost on an animal of the pursuit of knowledge.
BUNCE
A short film written by Stephen Fry, immortalising his debt to a boy named Bunce who once upon a yesteryear helped a young Stephen Fry indulge his love of sweets. It's funny to see the now elder Fry play a headmaster telling "himself" off, and the writing is as sharp as you'd expect from such a wit. Good fun.
THE GUARD
A showcase for how awesome Brendan Gleeson is (though The General proved that point over a decade ago), The Guard is the story of Gerry Boyle, the local cop in a small village that is suddenly the focus of a major operation to catch some drug smugglers. Gerry glides through, making inappropriate comments, sampling the wares and cleverly disguising the fact that he's a lot smarter than everyone else. Don Cheadle as the FBI agent sent across is just there to be the straight man, but he plays it very well. It's a very Irish sense of humour that pervades, dry and black, with wall to wall laughs. It's out in a week or two, so go check it out, it's a cack.
INTO ETERNITY
In Finland, it's been decided that the way to deal with their nuclear waste is to build a massive underground bunker and store it there, filling it back up with rock and sealing it for the next 100,000 years. This doco is meant to be a message to anyone who comes upon the site and imagines it's anything other than one of the most deadly places on earth and tries to excavate. I personally found the whole thing rather patronising and foolish, as it's structured and presented as if speaking to little children, telling fairytales about how deadly the place is. I was told after the screening by someone that's it's fairly normal behaviour for the Northern Europeans, no ambiguity. So it's probably just me. But still, I found it a ponderous and pretentious piece of work, though the information within was genuinely grim and thought provoking.
TABLOID
I had no idea what to expect from this one. All I knew was it was Errol Morris. The man has a talent for finding odd subjects, and this one is out there. Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen, falls in love with a mormon who promptly vanishes on her. She hires detectives to find him, and discovers he's in England. He didn't vanish, he just went on mission. So she goes over there, kidnaps him, straps him to a bed and they have sex for three days. At least, that's what's alleged. Her version is that he left willingly, then had guilt over the sex, convinced he would be excommunicated from the church, and thus lied to cover himself. The British tabloids got a hold of the story and ran with it. The whole thing is so fantastical you couldn't make it up, especially once more and more of Joyce's past catches up with her. Allegations fly back and forth, with both sides claiming their evidence has in the subsequent years been lost. The film falters as it shifts into Joyce's second run with notoriety, when she has her dead dog cloned in Korea, but it recovers. The whole thing in incredibly weird and funny, but you do feel a little dirty when you laugh. There's a level of exploitation going on here that makes the film's title very appropriate.
OPERATION 8
New Zealand has a reputation as being one of the most progressive and sensible countries around. This solidly constructed documentary annihilates that image. In 2007 the police raided and arrested an eclectic group of activists. Everyone from anarchists to indigenous rights activists were charged with terrorism offenses and locked up. But the evidence didn't stack up, so the Crown refused to prosecute. That wasn't the end though, and it's still being dragged through the courts to this day. It's a depressing vision of a nation, with police informers caught inciting crime, a retired undercover police officer admitting to fabricating evidence and claiming a culture of deception in the police, as well as private security firms spying on and infiltrating activist groups to protect commercial interests. It's a sad and pathetic state of affairs, but with people are trying to justify their paychecks, it seems unlikely sanity will prevail in the near term.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:05 AM
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