Love_Life_Laughter Nim was raised as a human, breast fed, given clothing, a human family, a house, bed and toys. In this loving environment he naturally developed a facility for language, was toilet trained, learning dozens of sign language words, and the ability to make sentences. He formed lasting friendships with some student teachers that tried throughout their lives, with the limited power they had, to protect him. Once grown, as part of a natural adolescence that included a period of danger to his teachers as he learned his own strength and looked for a mate, he was relegated to dirty cages, and had a near escape from the animal laboratories of nightmares in which conscious live chimps are immobilized in painful brain experiments. The emotional brutality shown towards Nim, particularly by Columbia Professor Hubert Terrace, is breathtaking. Terrace's propensity to sleep with Nim's female caretakers and act out rather strange family dynamics - first with a former lover who just married someone else, and later with the "next hot new thing" - could keep Freud busy for a long time. The most human character in the movie- loving, caring, expressive, communicative, and playful - was, ironically, Nim. I'm ashamed to be part of a culture that treated such a precious soul to such cruelty over so many years. The twisted power structures that enabled men like Terrace to use Nim as a tool to seek fame, and discard him without a thought like his student amours, rankle to the core. Late in his life, Nim kept trying to escape his cold cage to the house on the property - where he still felt he belonged. One wonders what Jane Goodall would think of our brutality towards Nim. I will never forget the interview in which his loving caretaker brought him to the brutal cages where he was met with a cattle prod by yet another heartless professor. I would like to put the cattle prod right back on him. Nim, on behalf of all feeling human beings, I'm sorry.

victornunnally The first ten minutes of this painful documentary goes beyond any justice. The scientists involved in this corrupt and mindless experiment should be tried by a court of law for intentional cruelty and torture. If my tax dollars paid for this experiment then our government is corrupt with eyes wide shut. A Mother is systematically tortured by having 6 two week old infants chimps taken from her. The 6th being the title character. What was gained here was pure psychopathy. There was no need for this experiment except for vain exploration. This film gives every reason why science needs regulations. However, since this is not going to happen then will someone please point to the red button so I can give it a huge push. This is perhaps the most horrifying film I have ever seen. What were these scientist hoping to accomplish; to raise a chimp to be human? For what purpose? To serve humans? To be slaves? To fill a void? We have to be a mutation in the gravest form. I want these scientists prosecuted.

poe426 In Walter Hill's GENOCIDE 101 (GERONIMO), several Apache turncoats learn that trusting The White Man can backfire on you: they, too, are rounded up, disarmed, and sent to the concentration camps whose blueprints the Nazis would one day study. In PROJECT NIM, a handful of scientists- whose primary concerns seem to have been getting laid- kidnap and "indoctrinate" an innocent child (because ALL animals are innocent children) before abandoning him. Proof: Terrace actually went on camera and declared his own research an abject failure- and he was WRONG. (The fact that this guy threw in the towel when the supply of nubile young assistants dried up was just coincidence, right? And the fact that he was unable to see proof sitting right before his eyes was just myopia, right? My hairy ***...) In an age when we can literally kick the mentally ill and the physically infirm to the curb in this country, the inherent inhumanity these people display isn't at all surprising. The lowest of the Low would have to be the Mengele of the animal research facility, a murderer named Mahoney who wistfully says that "chimps are forgiving. They'll forgive you." Oh yeah? On what planet? Only Bob Ingersoll has the right to go to sleep knowing that he at least TRIED to make Nim's life livable. Forgiveness? ****, some of these people didn't even acknowledge that Nim could OUTSMART them.

icecubeburn OK, so the idea going in to this film is we take a a baby chimp and test the nature versus nurture theory. Trying to see if we can "correct" their deficiency in human communication, if you will...What instead results is indeed a spectacle to witness. Nim is indeed a remarkable chimp who was sadly the victim of human inexperience with supplying the type of care he needed and deserved. What we learn is not what a chimpanzee is lacking, but what humanity is.I suggest watching the film with a mind towards what Nim himself must be thinking as you see his life unfold. Nim lives a chimpanzee's analog to a human life, but for a chimp, it is utterly horrifying to watch. But like any life, there are more lighthearted moments as well, such as Nim and his friend Bob with their "Stone." "Smoke." "Now." time together, which actually seemed to be Nim's best time with any humans.All in all, this documentary of Nim's life serves as a reminder that mother nature made chimpanzees and humans their own devices for communicating and living separately. The two cannot co-exist peacefully within one habitat due to the gap in strength and cognitive intelligence. However this one chimp, Nim, came remarkably close to peaceful co-habitation and viable communication with humans and his cost for such was great.