JANE (2017)
Directed by Brett
Morgen
National Geographic
Partners, 89 minutes, PG (Possible disturbing images)
★★★
Flamboyant rebels make interesting movie subjects. But what about
those whose rebellion is determined and quiet? Jane Goodall (b.1934)
revolutionized the field of primatology, but until relatively recently she seldom
tooted her own horn. In such a story, a documentary filmmaker’s job is to build
a dramatic structure for maximum impact. On this level, Director Brett Morgen is
only partly successful. Jane is a
decent film, but the East African landscape is more eye-popping than what we
learn about Ms. Goodall.
Goodall’s story begins in 1957, when she was working as a
secretary for a true rebel: anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey (1903-72). Leakey didn’t care all that much about
what others thought of him and when you advance evolutionary science as much as
he, you don’t have to. Leakey had already proven that many (if not all) human
ancestors came from Africa, and was looking for someone to study great apes in
hope of extrapolating from simian behavior how hominid ancestors might have
lived. He tapped Goodall because she had no
specialized training and wouldn’t be vested in bending observations toward any
existing theories of primate behavior. Not that there were that many; prior to
Goodall’s findings, chimpanzees were viewed mostly as circus animals. In 1957,
only someone with the audacity of Leakey could have made it possible for a
single, untrained, young female to immerse herself in the Gombe Stream Park, a
Tanzanian rainforest.
At first, she spent most of her days dodging poisonous
snakes and swatting vicious insects until at long last she found a chimp colony.
Her initial findings didn’t amount to much, but Leakey sent her off to train
with primatologists he trusted while he shook the money tree for funding. In
1960, Goodall rocked the scientific world with her discovery that chimps made
tools and that they had distinct personalities. This gave Leakey the clout to
do something done only seven times before: he pushed Goodall into a Ph.D.
program at Cambridge University when she was without the benefit of a
bachelor’s degree. Even then, National Geographic and other institutions balked
at sending a single woman back into the field. The compromise was that she had
to accept into her camp a male professional nature photographer: Hugh Van
Lawick (1937-2002). Much of Jane is
built around 100 hours of Van Lawick’s misplaced, unviewed film footage. It has
been restored to levels beyond could have been viewed in 1964.
Van Lawick and Goodall made a good work team. Their films
documented such hitherto unknown practices such as the polyandrous mating
behavior of females in estrus, clan-like social structures, and the shocking
levels of violence of which chimps are capable. Tool making, discrete
personalities, social hierarchy, and warfare… So much for the idea that humans
are unique in those regards.
In Jane, Goodall
is also under observation. In his best sequences of added material, Morgen shows
collages of sexist newspaper, magazine, and TV features that called more
attention to Goodall’s blond hair, fresh face, and shapely legs* than to her research.
Van Lawick, a Dutch baron, also fell for Goodall’s comely features; the couple married in 1964. Three years later,
their son “Grub” (Hugo Eric Louis Van Lawick) was born. Alas, Goodall and Van
Lawick were less successful as lovers. He grew bored playing second fiddle,
accepted a photography assignment in the Serengeti, and asked Jane to move
there with him. She chose career over marriage and the couple amicably divorced in 1974.
Given that Jane is
based mostly on Van Lawick’s recovered footage, it’s logical that most of
Goodall’s post-1974 activities—such as the creation of the Jane Goodall
Institute, her remarriage to Tanzanian parliamentarian and national parks
director Dereck Byrceson, her myriad awards, and ongoing work in Gombe—appear mostly
as coda. Logical, perhaps, but it’s problematic when chimpanzees end up with
more personality that our main subject. When asked how she put up with the
sexism in the early days, Goodall’s responded that since her childhood, “I
wanted to go to Africa and live among wild animals.” Morgen should not have
left such a banality stand unchallenged. The overall portrait of Goodall is
that she is more British stiff upper lip than a rebel in the field. Yet it’s
well known that she had her feminist consciousness raised. Tepid filmmaking blunts
the drama and instead, Morgen tries to amp up with a Philip Glass soundtrack. Glass
is occasionally brilliant, but this score is cloying and annoying.
Should you see Jane?
There are some amazing things in the film that weren’t necessarily intended as
major focal points. Read between the lines and you can appreciate how little we
knew before Goodall. When asked how she could get up close to animals “that
could rip your face off,” Goodall smiled and replied, “Yes, but one didn’t know
that at the time.” She learned fast. Scenes of chimp warfare are terrifying, as
were their attacks on Goodall’s compound. Parents will blanch at scenes of Grub
inside his wire mesh playroom; male chimps sometimes kill and eat infant chimps
and their evolutionary cousins. Shots from the Serengeti are awe-inspiring in
ways that made me think of it as the (Non-) Peaceable Kingdom. Morgen also does
a good job of showing flaws in some of Goodall’s research methods. Setting up
feeding stations made chimps easier to study, but also partially domesticated
them. By her own admission, she was also guilty of sentimentalizing; Goodall
not only touched her subjects, she gave them names such Goliath, David
Greybeard, Frodo, Flint, Fifi, Flo…. One might even reach for the barf bucket when
hearing Goodall tell of learning how to mother her own son by observing Flo.
I left the theater with my lifelong admiration of Goodall
intact, but my views might be conditioned more by years of following her career than
learning about it from the film. Insofar as discoveries go, I have long admired
Van Lawick’s photos, but previously knew little about him. Still, the film is
named Jane, not Hugo or Flo. Mainly I
admired the visuals. (Warning: There are extreme close-ups of snakes, insects,
and chimp faces, so if any of these make you queasy keep a hand ready to shield
your eyes.) I guess I can’t fault the film for making more about sexism; after
all, Goodall was in the field before The
Feminine Mystique made its way into the mainstream. I did notice, though,
the large number of females now working at Goodall’s old camp. Isn’t that worthy of
comment? Odd as it might seem, I’d recommend you first read Goodall’s Wikipedia
page if you decide to see Jane.
Goodall is a very important person. That should be shouted out; in the film
it’s often but a whisper. But maybe the film makes a contribution by reminding
us that rebels come in many forms, even those who simply do rather than make a
fuss about it.
Rob Weir
* A confession: I learned about Goodall as a grade school student.
(My aunt started buying National
Geographic for me when I was eight and I still get it). I too was smitten
with Goodall’s lovely legs and my child self thought her the most exotic woman
I had ever seen. I get a pass on the latter; that was objectively true for
where I was raised!
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