Gorillas in the Mist
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Movie Reviews of Gorillas in the Mist
Movie Review: Sigourney Weaver and a lot of hot air...
Summary: 2 Stars
I know that a lot of people really love this movie, but for me it just pushes forced melodramatics in a direction that doesn't suit the film or the message at all. Instead of really developing characters (or `a' character) and giving us a real study of Dian Fossey's character and motives and inner demons, we are given a blank sheet littered with some colorful acting decisions by the film's star.
The film centers on the work of Dian Fossey, an amateur scientist who pried her way into the mountainous regions of Rwanda to study and eventually protect the gorillas that inhabited it. Witnessing the horrors of poaching, Dian became the name and face behind gorilla preservation, and her actions certainly helped take the creatures off the endangered species list.
Still, the film lacks a human element that was needed to give Fossey a real voice.
I know this is going to sound like a broad statement, but a major issue I have with 80's cinema in general is the melodramatic nature of the majority of the films. There seems to be a lack of depth in a lot of what that decade provided us (there are certainly exceptions to this observation, but as a whole it really was weak). `Gorillas in the Mist' isn't one of those exceptions. It holds potential, but it meanders in its own values too much and winds up presenting something that feels almost hollow.
Fossey herself appears rather one-note. She is passionate in her convictions, but there are no layers presented to help flesh her out entirely. They hint, slightly, to her emotional stance during the ending sequence (it's a mere voiceover where you hear her lament about not having a family) but overall she isn't given much backstory. We are left wondering what her life was like before the gorillas. Why did she feel so consumed by their life and their preservation, at the cost of her own happiness? What was she running away from? I remember feeling similar frustrations while watching the documentary `Grizzly Man' (which holds a similar story in many terms). I wanted to know more about her, and I felt like the film wasted an opportunity to really do her story and her life justice.
I also found some of the films scenes to be unconvincingly overdramatic. I understand that all `true stories' are dramatized for greater emotional impact when Hollywood gets a hold of it, but you have to be careful not to go so far that you become unbelievable. I'm sorry, but there is no way that Fossey would have gotten away with hitting and punching and screaming at Rwandan soldiers and not have been shot and killed; it just wouldn't have happened.
Alas, Sigourney Weaver does all that she can to make this film palatable, and in most respects she pulls it off (it's not an overly remarkable performance, but she is certainly moving). Still, it moves like a soap opera in too many moments and it lacks the depth needed to make this a poignant and lasting character study.