westsideschl
Positives:
Seeing & hearing about her early life s a teen and younger was interesting especially as it related to her naturalist motivations. Seeing how she observed and interacted with the African landscape also interesting. A taste of her observational methodologies that she felt comfortable developing including the interactions with the chimps interesting as well although some criticize as not scientifically rigorous.
Negatives:
The major negative, and which Nat Geo should be ashamed, is the lack of subtitling to help some viewers as well as to compensate for at times poor audio. Yes, Nat Geo, dialogue is important. Minor, almost neutral, is the Glass background music which may be excessive to some viewers, and a lot of footage for ambience such as caterpillars crawling on a branch. Would have liked a bit more on her later life, and what research is currently finding at her chimp center.
pmpmn9
It's well worth watching and I highly recommend it. I've known about Jane Goodall's work for many years. What I didn't realize all this time was that Jane wasn't a researcher or even a student when she went to live in Gombe in 1957 to study the chimpanzees, she was a 26-year-old secretary with a love of animals. That's all. She is a perfect example of how the seemingly most unqualified person can actually be the best one for a job. It took five months for her to even get close to the chimpanzees. Someone else might not have or given up. She compiled tons of data. Someone else might not have been as thorough. Tragedies happened and her personal life threatened her commitment, but she never gave up, always went back, and this ground-breaking research is still in progress over 60 years later. That's dedication. Well done, Dr. Goodall!
proud_luddite
British Chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall is the subject of this American documentary which includes footage of her early research in Gombe, Tanzania in the 1950s and 1960s plus current interviews and narration made specifically for this film.The highest praise must go to the film footage preservationists who have maintained perfect prints of the colourful adventures in what was very high risk in unknown territory six decades ago. The superb footage is enhanced with Goodall's clear narration and a pleasurable score by Philip Glass.The first half is thrilling as it includes very surprising information of how Goodall was chosen for this mission especially regarding her background. The second half is still engaging but it has less novelty than the beginning. It still provides a lot of fascinating history though, including Goodall's personal life and the evolution of the chimp community with which she bonds.As the film evolves, it is easy to see that Goodall's patience must have been one of the reasons she was selected for the task. Even when the animals stay close to her, she knows to avoid touching them until the right moment.An unfulfilled curiosity is the lives and personalities of local Tanzanians who assist the mission. But the star attraction and the fabulous footage make this viewing worthwhile. What is most amazing is how Jane Goodall looks really very similar to how she did sixty years ago despite the inevitable effects of aging. Waiter, I'll have what she's having.
Howard Schumann
In 1960, primatologist Jane Goodall, the twenty six-year-old secretary of paleontologist Louis Leakey, was chosen to conduct research in Africa for his study of the influence of apes on primitive man. Though she was not a scientist and never attended university, her open mind, love of animals, and the strong support she received from her mother (who accompanied her to Africa) influenced his choice, one that turned out to be a very wise one. Reconstructed from over one hundred hours of footage shot by nature photographer Hugo van Lavick, Jane Goodall's life is brought to the screen in the riveting documentary simply called Jane. Directed by Brett Morgen("Cobain: Montage of Heck"), the film, which combines recent interviews with Jane, now 83, with the archival footage only discovered in 2014, transports us to the Gombe Stream National Park in Northwestern Tanzania, shortly before the country gained its independence from Britain in 1961. As narrated by Goodall from an audio recording of her 1999 book "Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey," we witness Jane's groundbreaking research into the behavior of chimpanzees in their natural environment, research that was initially questioned by the entrenched scientific community who said that her findings could not be taken seriously because she was a woman and lacked adequate training. The first person to observe chimpanzees in the wild, Jane was forced to keep her distance until the animals could accept the presence of the "white ape." Supported by the magnificent cinematography of Ellen Kraus and a moving score by Philip Glass, we see a silent Jane searching for observation points in the immaculate solitude of the mountains she grew to love. It was a process that required patience and fearlessness, which Jane tells us came from the fact that she did not know enough to be afraid. Her first important breakthrough occurred when she observed Greybeard, the oldest male chimp, using a twig tool to dig out termites from a brush. The discovery was contrary to the consensus opinion that only humans could use tools and was met with resistance, especially by religious groups.
Though we now know that chimpanzees are among the most intelligent primates and that there is 99% identical DNA between human beings and chimpanzees, the media reported the story of Jane's accomplishments with the usual skepticism. Citing the fact that she gave the animals names instead of numbers, they asserted that it showed her tendency to anthropomorphize them and to over identify with the subjects she was researching. In spite of the critics, Jane received a grant from the National Geographic to continue her work and, though she was initially resistant to the idea, they also sent her a Dutch filmmaker, Hugo van Lavick, to record her work on film. Developing a relationship with Hugo, they eventually married and gave birth to a son they named Grub. It was Jane's observation of the bond between Flo, an older female, and her baby Flint that provided her with some lessons in child rearing, though the bond between Flo and Flint did not end happily. In one troubling incident, after the chimpanzees began to steal bananas from their tent, Jane and Hugo began to supply them to the chimps, hoping this would prevent a more aggressive intrusion. It was a decision that had to be rethought, however, when the animals invaded their tent and stole everything they could get their hands on. Even more distressing was an outbreak of polio among the community and the civil war that broke out between two factions of chimpanzees after the death of one of their maternal leaders, lending irony to Jane's assertion that, "The more I learned the more I realized how much like us they were." Unfortunately, Jane and Hugo began to drift apart when he lost the funding for his work in Gombe and left to photograph wild animals on the Serengeti Plain in Northern Tanzania, one of the natural wonders of the world. Now designated as an engendered species, chimpanzees have already disappeared from four African countries, and are nearing extinction in many others. Millions of chimpanzees used to live throughout equatorial Africa but today there are only 220,000 left in the world, a sad reminder of the increasing degradation of our planet. Thanks to The Jane Goodall Institute, an organization she founded that is dedicated to conservation, she has become an activist, traveling around the world talking about the need to protect endangered species, climate change, and the environment, attempting to build, in Werner Erhard's phrase, "a world that works for everyone."
