By: Karen Pecota
24/7 MOMS Film Reviewer
DisneyNature celebrates Earth Day 2012 with the nationwide premier of Chimpanzee. Filmmakers Alastair Fothergill (“African Cats” and ‘Earth”) and Mark Linfield (“Earth”) team up with actor, Tim Allen (the film’s narrator) to bring to the silver screen an unusual true-to-life nature tale featuring a chimpanzee colony located deep into the African Rain Forest. Chimpanzee is DisneyNature’s fourth feature film as a nature reality tale with wild animals.
The filmmakers/cinematographers miraculously capture on film life altering events for members of a chimpanzee colony in Africa’s animal kingdom. Fothergill and Linfield share an adventure that includes a baby chimpanzee named Oscar, along with his mother, Isha, as well as, their clans alpha male leader, Freddy and a rival chimpanzee pack led by a bully named Scar. DisneyNature has made it possible for Fothergill and Linfield to share with the world a wild and endearing adventure tale. The out takes at the film’s end gives the audience a glimpse into the filmmakers difficult trek into the Tai Forest to observe one of the world’s most fascinating wildlife subjects–the chimpanzee.
DisneyNature describes the Tai rain forest to be half the size of Texas with a population of twenty-one million and a southern border along the Gulf of Guinea. The Tai Forest, is sixty miles inland and in 1982 the land was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The biodiversity with hundreds of plant and bird species that live within its borders share the habitat with an ever growing chimpanzee population.
DisneyNature adds, “Fothergill and Linfield are not bothered by the discomforts and logistical challenges of their nature filmmaking jobs but both consider the Tai Forest to be particularly grueling and describe their filming trek with fond memories.” They said, “One of the big things is the sheer inaccessibility of the Tai Forest. To get there you begin by driving ten hours from the nearest city on what is still a tarmac road. Then you do another four hours on a dirt road that is sometimes impassable. And, if you make it that far, there is an hour or more of walking along a very narrow path into the forest.” According to these filmmaking exerts there were many more days of combat with the elements of nature, i.e. a three-mile trek into the jungle that felt like they were jogging in a sauna; or, often no light meter readings due to the darkness from the jungle’s heavy vegetation; and struggling to keep up with the chimpanzee’s because their human body lacked the same agility traveling on their hands and knees dodging extremely thick vines while carrying all of their equipment. One can only imagine that very little film footage would be possible to can from their journey if this were the end of their trekking story.
Fortunately DisneyNature hires only the best filmmakers to brand their animal kingdom message of nature’s circle of life. Fothergill and Linfield are keen on producing the goods and do so under the most grueling circumstances. Their work gives the film audience a peek into the upbringing of the baby chimpanzee, Oscar as well as a piece of fascinating evidence for the research of chimpanzee behavioral science. Oscar looses his mother to an untimely death while protecting her clan’s territory–a section of the rain forest that is rich in food supply. A surrogate mother needs to step in her place or Oscar will die of malnutrition and loneliness. None of the female’s in the group jump at the chance forcing the alpha male and clan leader, Freddy to do something about the situation. Freddy takes control of the clan’s needs in a whole new fashion. Freddy adds one more job description to his portfolio and Oscar learns to live again.