MOVIE REVIEW : The Glories of ‘Gorillas in Mist’

“Gorillas in the Mist” (at the Avco Cinema and the Edwards Newport Cinema) has everything you could ask for in an adventure film--exotic locales, romance, danger and, finally, tragedy. With a sense of beauty and wonderment the film illuminates an extraordinary and unprecedented communication between a human being and the world’s largest primates, which in turn raises serious and complex issues surrounding an endangered species and its preservation.

At its center, the film has an absolutely stunning performance from Sigourney Weaver as the heroic and controversial primatologist, Dian Fossey.

Fossey was a 31-year-old Louisville, Ky., physical therapist treating handicapped children when her life was transformed--she read anthropologist George Schaller’s study of the mountain gorillas. This in turn led her to renowned paleo-anthropologist Louis Leakey (played by Iain Cuthbertson with a dash of nonchalance), who was eager to determine how close the great apes were to early man and who believed that women are temperamentally better suited to conduct such studies than men.

Weaver gives us a strong, passionate and beautiful Fossey, who in the Garden of Eden-like environment of Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains has found her mission in life. Ostensibly, Fossey’s assignment is simply to take a census of the mountain gorillas, whose numbers are rapidly dwindling at the hands of poachers, who sell the animals’ babies to zoos and their parents’ heads and hands as souvenirs. But she soon becomes captivated by the creatures, who seem to her all the more human the more she befriends and studies them. Is it any wonder she comes to love them and becomes a fiery zealot in their defense?

In telling Fossey’s story the accomplishments of director Michael Apted, writers Anna Hamilton Phelan (“Mask”) and Tab Murphy, cinematographer John Seale and composer Maurice Jarre and their cast and crew are many and varied. First of all are the crucial, heart-tugging and largely improvised scenes of Weaver as Fossey gradually acquiring the trust of the gorillas. Incredibly touching and utterly persuasive, they are the very heart of the film. These animals are so endearing and intelligent their very presence challenges us to reflect upon the relationship of man and so-called beast.

The film painstakingly establishes that Rwanda is a desperately poor country, which makes it difficult to give top priority to the preservation of an endangered species, no matter how vital to scientific research on the origins of man. This laxity, which produces some horrific slaughters--this is where undetectably fake gorillas are used--not surprisingly turns Fossey into a fearless fanatic in a cause to protect gorillas. (For all its appreciation of nature, “Gorillas in the Mist,” MPAA-rated PG-13, is absolutely out of the question for pre-teens.)

Yet as skillfully as Weaver conveys Fossey’s increasing obsessiveness and its accompanying rages, we never lose sympathy with Fossey for all the enemies she makes; indeed, the film leaves us persuaded that any less-single-minded dedication on the part of Fossey, even at the risk and ultimate cost of her life, would not have saved the gorillas (which, we’re told, have continued to increase in number since her brutal and mysterious murder in 1985.

As effective as the film is on its own terms, it should be pointed out that some punches have been pulled. Reportedly, Fossey was far more vengeful against the poachers than the film depicts. She was also said to have become a heavy drinker, possibly alcoholic, but this is played down.

Bryan Brown is ideal as the ruggedly attractive National Geographic photographer who was to bring Fossey her initial renown and who was to become her last love before she gave over her life to “her” gorillas on “her” mountain. Julie Harris as one of Fossey’s few friends and John Omirah Miluwi as Fossey’s tracker and doggedly loyal assistant lend fine support.

Fossey, who wished she looked like Dolly Parton, had wanted Brooke Shields to play her in her youth and Elizabeth Taylor to portray her in her maturity. But the tall and regal Weaver is perfect casting as a woman who could be alternately dazzling and crazed, a woman who ultimately sacrifices her looks, her health and finally her life for animals who became as cherished to her as the children she would never have.