The real basic instinct
Instinct A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 By Michael Redman
***1/2 (Out of ****)
The most dangerous threat to modern civilization isn't nuclear war. Nor is it corrupt politicians, greedy big business or economic collapse. The biggest danger, the thing that could bring our society as we know it to a screeching halt, is if people were to wake up.
A sleeping population is what greases the wheels of modern commerce. If the guys flipping burgers were to suddenly realize how they're spending most of their lives, you'd never get a Big Mac again. If everyone who hated their jobs decided to do something more meaningful to them, we'd find empty offices and stores.
Noted anthropologist and primatologist Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) gets in touch with what is really real -- and he goes to live with the apes.
As the film opens, Powell is being transferred from a horrid prison in Rwanda to American authorities. Charged with attacking a group of men and killing two of them, he is then incarcerated in an equally barbaric prison for the criminally insane in the US. He refuses to speak, even to defend himself.
Ambitious young psychiatrist Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) sees Powell as his ticket to ride the career fast track and volunteers to perform his evaluation. Attempting to get inside the former researcher's head, he tracks down Powell's estranged daughter for clues. Along the way, he has to do battle with cruel prison guards, his icy mentor and the frustrated ineffectual prison psychiatrist.
When Caulder finally gets the wild man to communicate, he discovers there's more going on than psychosis and often becomes Powell's student. He slowly learns to see beyond the illusions he's been indoctrinated with.
Loosely based on the novel Ishmael, this is a tale of just how thin the veneer of civilization is and what we have given up. After years of observing gorillas in the wild, Powell is accepted as one of them. Spending more and more time with the apes, he doesn't return to his camp to sleep one night. In a powerful scene, he leaves his binoculars and machete behind, joins the gorilla family and doesn't go to work anymore.
Hopkins is a remarkable actor. The audience hangs on his every word and slightest movement. He isn't just playing the part of a scientist gone native, he becomes that character. Gooding, he of the most furrowed brow in cinema, is completely believable as the obstinate analyst forced to examine his own life.
The jungle scenery is beautiful and the gorillas more authentic than anything seen before.
This could have been a four-star film but there are some elements that seem overly familiar. A few scenes and characters are lifted directly from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". Director Jon Turteltaub ("Phenomenon") borrows liberally from "Silence Of The Lambs", "Tarzan", "Gorillas In The Mist" and prison reform films such as "Brubaker".
The mystery of why Powell kills is a key plot element but it isn't much of a puzzle.
There are a few film cliches. The guards are evil and uncaring. A couple of insane murderers are cute and cuddly. Prison is a bad place. Animals are noble savages and humans, marauding destroyers. Occasionally the pacing falters. It does avoid one trap. A potential obligatory love interest turns, instead, into a friendship.
For any other film, these flaws might have ruined the movie. Here, Hopkins is so commanding that you'll fall right into the story, forgetting the artistic problems. His performance and the powerful underlying message overwhelm the structural defects.
Very few people are going to give up their successful professional careers to run off and live with the beasts. The metaphor for what Joseph Campbell calls "following your bliss" won't be taken to heart by many. Most of us are too satisfied with bread and circuses to take that type of chance. But what if we did?
(Michael Redman has written this column for almost 24 years and is heading out the door to live in the wilds of southern Indiana with the raccoons. He'll probably still get email at Redman@indepen.com)
[This appeared in the 6/10/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com]
-- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/
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