Some of them believe a woman living alone up there has to be mad. 1966. Occupational therapist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) is inspired by Kenyan-British paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) to devote her life to the study of primates. She writes ceaselessly to Leakey for a job cataloguing and studying the rare mountain gorillas of Central Africa. Following him to a lecture in Louisville, Kentucky in 1966, she convinces him of her conviction telling him she can count. He is persuaded after months of campaigning. They go to the Congo, where Leakey and his foundation equip her to make contact with the gorillas, introducing her to a local animal tracker, Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi). Otherwise she is alone. Settling deep in the jungle, Fossey and Sembagare locate a troop of gorillas, only after she realises Sembagare has never tracked gorillas before. Never, ever run from a gorilla. They are soon displaced by the events of the Congo Crisis and find themselves forcibly evicted from their research site by Congolese soldiers, who accuse Fossey of being a foreign spy and agitator, believing her to be British. Fossey is resigned to returning to the United States but Sembagare and her temporary host Rosamond Carr (Julie Harris) motivate her to stay in Africa. Fossey establishes new research efforts in the jungles of neighbouring Rwanda where rampant poaching and corruption become apparent when she discovers several traps near her new base camp at Karisoke. Nevertheless, Fossey and her colleagues make headway with the gorillas, taking account of their communication and social groups. Her work impresses Leakey and gains international attention. National Geographic, which funds her efforts, dispatches photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown) to highlight her research. Fossey, initially unreceptive to this unannounced observer, grows increasingly attached to Campbell after several photo sessions with the gorillas. The two become lovers, despite Campbell’s marriage. Campbell proposes to divorce his wife and marry Fossey but insists that she would have to spend time away from Karisoke and her gorillas with him in Borneo, ultimately leading her to end their relationship. Fossey forms an emotional bond with a male named Digit and tries to prevent the export of other gorillas by trader Claude Van Vecten (Constantin Alexandrov). I’m not running for Miss Congeniality. Appalled by the poaching of the gorillas for their skins, hands and heads, Fossey complains to the government of Rwanda and is dismissed but one minister, Mukara (Waigwa Wachira) promises to hire an anti-poaching squad. Fossey’s frustrations reach a climax when Digit is beheaded by poachers. She leads numerous anti-poaching patrols, burns down the poachers’ villages and stages a mock execution of one of the offenders, serving to alienate some of her visiting research assistants Brendan (Iain Glen), Larry (David Lansbury) and Kim (Maggie O’Neill) and gaining her various enemies. Sembagare expresses concern at Fossey’s opposition to the emerging industry of gorilla tourism, but she nonchalantly dismisses his worries … They are not going to turn this mountain into a goddamn zoo. This biopic of famed naturalist Dian Fossey features phenomenal performances, not merely from Weaver as the ornery woman who applied her occupational therapy skill set in an entirely alien environment and suffered for her efforts, but her animal friends. Adapted from her own memoir and an Esquire article by Harold T.P. Hayes, this isn’t entirely a sympathetic portrait but it is a desperately upsetting film due to the violent butchery inflicted on the gorillas particularly because the scenes between Dian and the animals (a combination of the real thing, actors in costume and animatronics) are awesome. Perhaps there is a writing flaw in the screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan (with Tab Murphy) and that is the lack of penetrating insight into Fossey with this sometimes feeling a little like a sketch and not a fully fledged portrait. There are no Out of Africa moments here – no time to sit back and enjoy the scenery or look at Fossey in an intimate way in a bigger context despite her willingness to reveal herself in every way to Campbell. She is literally a creature in the wild. Fossey is a can-do woman, pragmatic, active and direct and rarely exhibiting weakness to others. Persistent, driven and passionate, a character of rare devotion and capable of great love, Weaver is tremendous as this hard-living woman, a woman alone, even her choice of cigarettes is both expensive and hard on her lungs – you could see Katharine Hepburn in the role but Weaver probably has more colours in her characterisation than Hepburn would have mustered in her heyday. You’re the story. You’re what people are interested in. She has to be told that exposing her in magazines is good for the gorillas – to stop those doctors buying pieces of gorilla’s bodies for display. So she agrees to her own form of guarded display, the kind in which she engages with the gorillas in order to communicate. Her choices, good and bad, can be judged by the reaction of Sembagare – Miluwi’s face is a marvel in repose. This takes place in a febrile exotic setting with the locals as likely to take a machete to one as draw breath and there is no forgetting that while Africa may be the cradle of mankind it cannot be mistaken for civilisation and it’s always ripe for exploitation. The geopolitics are always lurking in the undergrowth and they have no respect for life. The cinematography by John Seale is simply seamless with great editing by Stuart Baird but the strangely discordant score by Maurice Jarre is oddly discomfiting, a harbinger of Fossey’s fate, because, like all women in this world, she must be taught a harsh lesson. Immensely moving. Directed by Michael Apted. This isn’t your private kingdom
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