I remember a scholar once said that the foundation of Western ethics is the Golden Rule of heart-to-heart (in China, it is the so-called "do not do to others what you do not want to do to others"), so any documentary about animals, in To a certain extent, it is a documentary about people: they tell us how different animals are from humans at the overall level, and tell the stories of all kinds of people and animals in the film at the individual level, but obviously more important Yes, at the level of the ego, it makes us reflect on our own understanding of what is called "human nature".
So, I have to admit, this is a very sad movie. Nim was actually just an experiment from the very beginning, it was just an experiment with higher treatment from a human point of view, and later abandoned into a medical laboratory, it was a very poor experiment, But no matter what, he was just our tool and plaything from the beginning. As far as the film is concerned, what impresses us the most is not Nim's ability to sign language, but the kind of human ability and consciousness that is reflected in a chimpanzee after he was raised as a human. That is, Nim may not understand what a man is or what a chimpanzee is, but in his "mind" he once considered himself a member of the human family, because this is where he grew up. If we can use the sense of belonging to define a kind of existence, then obviously Nim at this time is more of a human, although he has an indelible wildness in him.
There are a lot of places in the film that make us sad, but Nim's enthusiasm for Terrace the last time he came to see him, for Stephanie's mercy at the end, and the presence of people like Bob also moved us. Maybe the ending of the film is too lyrical, but it does give us a shock: "Chimps are truly wonderful animals. They are very forgiving, for the vast majority of them. They will forgive you."
How about us then, the so-called Homo sapiens?
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