In this blog post, I will summarize the plot and provide a formal and narrative analysis of the documentary film ‘Project Nim’.

Documentary Introduction

Title: Project Nim / PROJET NIM Director: James Marsh Year of Production: 2011 (Released August 9, 2012) Synopsis: In 1973, a chimpanzee named “Nim” is born at a research institute in Oklahoma. Forced to be separated from his mother for Dr. Herbert’s project, Nim is raised like a human child in Stephanie’s home. Growing up alongside Stephanie’s daughter Jenny, Nim is entrusted to Laura from the research team for language training. He learns basic words through sign language and displays remarkable abilities, but as time passes, he occasionally exhibits violence, revealing his chimpanzee nature. Concluding that the experiments could not continue, Professor Herbert halts the project and sends Nim back to the lab, where he is confined to a cage.
Reason for Selection: Through a recent philosophy course, I had the opportunity to reflect on human dignity and life, and in the process, I gained the impression that humans appear to be beings who are gradually degenerating and losing their dignity. I selected this documentary to reexamine my values and beliefs and to explore new themes.

Sequence Summary

True to its nature as a documentary based on a true story, the overall structure combines archival footage, interviews, and reenactments. Rather than following a traditional narrative plot structure, it proceeds in a linear, explanatory manner, adopting a “development-event-consequence” approach where events unfold and lead to outcomes as new characters are introduced.
Sequence 1: The Start of the Project and the Birth of the Chimpanzee “Nim Chimskey” — The project begins to experiment with improving a chimpanzee’s language abilities through sign language, and Nim is raised like a human child.
Sequence 2: The Arrival of Educators and the True Nature of the Chimpanzee — Nim, who had displayed advanced cognitive abilities thanks to the educators’ efforts, begins to reveal his true nature and show aggression toward humans after growing up for about five years.
Sequence 3: Nim’s Abandonment and the Arrival of an Eternal Friend — Due to Nim’s growing ferocity, the project is terminated, and Nim is relegated to a chimpanzee used for medical experiments. Later, with the arrival of his friend Bob, he lives a happy life for a time before meeting his death.

Narrative Analysis

Main Characters and Roles: Dr. Lemon (Director of the Primate Research Institute), Herbert (Project Lead Professor), Stephanie (the woman who raised Nim like a human child), Jenny (Stephanie’s daughter and a sister-like figure to Nim), Laura (the initial trainer and a victim of Nim’s attack), Joyce (the trainer who cherished and loved Nim), Rene (a victim of a severe attack), Bob (Nim’s closest human friend and savior), Mahoney (a doctor who conducted medical experiments on chimpanzees).
The narrative unfolds through a structure where the situation shifts with the “appearance of new characters.” Given that scientific experimentation is central to the story, the plot is structured so that the chimpanzee’s condition and emotions are revealed as supervisors and educators change. While the chimpanzee’s life story is presented in a cohesive, cinematic manner, the documentary genre highlights Nim’s hidden wounds and human cruelty, which were obscured behind the project.
Professor Herbert exploited Nim for scientific purposes, but when Nim displayed his instincts, he decided to lock him back in a cage. The statement from Laura’s interview—“How can you raise an animal that could kill a person as if it were human?”—highlights this contradiction. It prompts us to ask: Do humans truly live humanely without killing one another? And why should human dignity apply only to humans?
Had the film been treated as a conventional narrative, it might have ended as a predictable, sentimental story. Instead, it draws the audience in through documentary-style realism and actual footage, particularly the tender moments between Nim and his mother. The real footage leaves a strong impression through its realistic portrayal of life, distinct from CGI or dramatic staging.

Formal Analysis

The film’s composition consists of approximately 40% interviews, 20% reenactments, and 20% actual footage. It unfolds by layering voice-overs over interview footage while inserting photographs or archival footage. Despite the abundance of reenactments, they never feel artificial, thanks to technical realism and a cynical directorial approach.
Director James Marsh excels at the use of sound. For example, the use of silence during scenes of attacks on humans, and the background music when Nim and his friend Bob reunite, effectively convey the mood and emotions of the scenes. The editing also seamlessly connects interviews and archival footage in a melodic way, providing an immersive experience that makes the audience feel as if they are actually experiencing the events.
Documentaries are centered on “facts.” While feature films tend to target audience reactions through prediction and calculation, documentaries are based on authenticity that stems from unfiltered intuition and perception. This film succeeds in presenting the collected archival materials not as a mere archive, but as a living experience.

The animal most corrupted and losing its dignity

The portrayal of Nim, educator Joyce, and friend Vic in the film raises important ethical questions. It was not the chimpanzee but human selfishness that ultimately led the scientists—who had brought the chimpanzee to teach it sign language—to cease communication.
We seek respect simply because we are human, yet one wonders whether humans truly live up to that dignity within society. For instance, cases of animals abandoned amid conflicts and disasters reveal human cruelty and selfishness. In the film, Nim attacked the chimpanzee who had raised him but showed mercy by sparing her life, a gesture that can be interpreted as a more generous aspect than that of humans.
The scientists and researchers who led the project sacrificed innocent lives under the pretext of scientific objectives. This contradictory attitude of sacrificing other lives to cure human diseases must be criticized. Watching Nim appear happy among the other chimpanzees in the final scene leaves one with a sense of regret, wondering what might have been if Nim had lived in the wild from the start.
As Bob said, whether Nim learns language may not be the crucial issue. We were able to communicate with Nim, and the problem may not be that chimpanzees are incapable of communication, but rather that we have entered an era where even humans fail to communicate properly with one another, even within a corrupted human society.