GORILLAS IN THE MIST
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A substantial and provocative film, GORILLAS IN THE MIST tells us the story of Dian Fossey, who made herself one of the leading experts on mountain gorillas and who fought for their preservation. Rating: +2.
GORILLAS IN THE MIST is the biography of Dian Fossey, a physical therapist who dropped her entire life and went to live in Central Africa to study gorillas. It is the story of a passage from being a naive and selfish young dilettante to being a lion of a woman, fighting for the survival of the mountain gorillas of Rwanda.
As the film opens, there is little admirable about Dian Fossey (played by Sigourney Weaver). She rudely arrives in the middle of a lecture by the famous Dr. Louis Leakey (played by Ian Cuthbertson). She even borrows a pencil for notes and apparently does not return it. She doggedly follows Leakey, however, to persuade him to hire her to use her therapy skills to take a gorilla census. After a series of misadventures, she discovers the skills to approach gorillas and even to make unprecedented physical contact with them. This minor victory and a new-found instinct to protect the gorilla family she comes to know transforms her from a shallow amateur to a woman with a cause. Almost immediately she recognizes the dangers that others of her species pose to her new-found family, and she finds clever and crafty ways to outsmart the poachers who prey on the gorillas.
For a while Fossey considers a relationship with a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC photographer who has come to do a story on her work. And there is where the film makes its biggest mistake. At this point the film decides to concentrate on the mating habits of humans. Director Michael Apted wastes the unique locale and the characters to tell a rather dull love story that goes on entirely too long. Luckily it does not become the major thrust of GORILLAS IN THE MIST.
After this rather annoying diversion the film returns to the main storyline. GORILLAS IN THE MIST is at its best when it shows how Fossey learned about the gorillas or how she fought poachers to help preserve the species, not when it concentrates on the love life.
GORILLAS IN THE MIST is something of a departure for director Michael Apted, whose best known film is the remarkable 28 UP, the documentary that interviews the same group of people at ages 7, 14, 21, and 28. Yet both films show an interest in how apes and men inherit what they are and what they will become. Interestingly the film's associate producer and the source of its special effects is Rick Baker, a superb creator of makeup specializing in realistic portrayals of apes. Almost undoubtedly he also acted in the film though his name is not listed among the "mimes" in the credits. (He proves once more that the shoddy ape work he did in the title role of the 1976 KING KONG was forced on him and below his standards.)
At its worst GORILLAS IN THE MIST is no worse than mediocre and it does achieve moments of magnificence. Rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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