Jane

In 1960 a twenty six year old woman with no scientific training goes to Gombe in Tanzania and begins watching chimpanzees. Jane Goodall sees nothing for months; the animals will not come near. Then she sees a chimpanzee strip a twig and push it into a termite mound. It is the first record of an animal other than a human making a tool, and it changes a definition of the human that rested on tool use. Brett Morgen directs. The documentary rests on an archival discovery. More than a hundred hours of unused film were found in the National Geographic vault; shot by Hugo van Lawick at the start of the sixties, it is in colour, clean and extraordinarily close. The documentary was built on it. Van Lawick later married Goodall, and that is the second strand; the tension between the work, the marriage and motherhood is taken on directly. The music is by Philip Glass. Where the film is honest is the violence of the chimpanzees. Goodall first took them for peaceable; years later she observed systematic killing between groups, and the documentary does not skip that section. Goodall narrates in her present voice, and the distance between the archive and now carries the emotional weight. Who it is for: anyone interested in nature documentary and the history of science. Who it is not for: the structure is chronological, the tone is admiring, and the scientific criticism of Goodall's methods is not addressed.