Thoughts on Gorillas in the Mist

 

via Giphy/Courtesy Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures

"They were murdered by poachers. The gorilla population now is half what it was 10 years ago."
"Your problem is decreasing gorillas. Mine is increasing people. We're on opposite sides of the same problem."
"Can I have this water?"
"Sure. (as Dian feeds the baby gorilla) That kind of money provides people with food, clothing, shoes, medicine, necessities. Do you want to compare priorities, Miss Fossey?"

We're four movies into The Women of 1988 and an interesting sequence is going on with the five movies featuring the 61st Academy Awards' Best Actress nominees. I started with Dangerous Liaisons and its small ensemble of women. Next, The Accused, with two leads but ultimately remembered as a star vehicle. After that, Working Girl, another star vehicle, but with well-remembered supporting performances. And now here we are with Gorillas in the Mist, an unmistakable star vehicle with a lead character who tends to alienate others. This, of course, sets things up nicely for A Cry in the Dark (which, like The Accused, includes a not-so "nice" person seeking justice). Clearly, there are no accidents when it comes to Thoughts On.

I suppose comparing and contrasting Mist with Out of Africa is inevitable. Both are 1980s movies released by Universal Pictures starring a Yale School of Drama alumna. Both are gorgeously photographed. Both feature the main character having an affair with an adventurous man and a special relationship with a Black companion. Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi) appears to have been a composite character, but I liked his role as the friend who could also call out Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver). Mist, released less than three years after Fossey's murder, is most interesting when it depicts the qualities that may have led to her death. Nineteen years in the jungle apparently didn't rid Dian of ugly Americanism. 

Contemporary critics felt Mist's creative team, including director Michael Apted, screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan and Tab Murray, who shared story credit with Phelan, pulled its punches with Dian. They sanitized her. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing that Dian was righteous. What was frustrating was that she was so conventional. I understand where the detractors are coming from, but I'll admit to being greatly satisfied by seeing Sigourney take charge. Dian, like an old school heroine, usually gets the last word. I could have done without the initial silliness, like Dian insisting that her hairdryer be brought to the jungle, but she's rarely less than formidable.

"The Virungas are supposed to be protected parks land. Where's the protection?"

"Protection is expensive."

"That's your problem. Make new laws, raise taxes, but give my gorillas the protection they're entitled to."

"Your gorillas? As I recall, Miss Fossey, you're a visitor on a yearly renewable work permit. Now I don't believe that status entitles you to make government policy."

"... What about this poor baby? This animal is going to die in 24 hours. You'll be giving back all that money because Van Vecten doesn't look to me like the kind of guy to buy dead property."

Julie Harris and Maggie O'Neill briefly appear in Mist. Otherwise, it's more or less a one-woman movie. I was awestruck when Dian and the gorillas were in contact. Even if the primates were confused about her exact species, they still saw a fascinating mimic, grimacing and making other gestures "that I wouldn't be caught dead doing in front of anyone." Dian might have felt like a fool, but she was also planting her flag on a new frontier of research. Sigourney, according to Hal Hinson of The Washington Post, also never looked as beautiful than in those scenes. I might not go that far, but I will say that she was stunning and memorable.

Dian's romance with National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown) is most interesting when it's aligned with her and the gorillas. I cared when Bob filmed contact with Digit, et. al, not when he and Dian were dealing with his marriage and whether or not she could leave her new home. I have to admit, though, I wasn't expecting that when the movie was through with Bryan/Bob, it was through. He didn't even get to pop back in for the funeral scene before the credits. Myst similarly eventually discards Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson). Evidently, there's not much passenger space in a star vehicle. And what a ride it is.

"I could try to make her well enough to make that journey, if ..."

"If?"

"If you give me five men, to train as rangers, anti-poaching rangers."

"... Four men. And you pay half their salary."

"Three men, and you pay all their salary."

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "Look around you, kids. This is as close to God as you get."

-- Box Office: Grossing $24.7 million on a $22 million budget, Mist opened wide at No. 1.

-- Awards Watch: Mist went zero for five at the Oscars, with nods for Weaver, the screenplay, Maurice Jarre's score, the editing and the sound. Weaver (as mentioned, in a three-way tie with Jodie Foster and Shirley MacLaine) and Jarre each won Golden Globes and the movie itself lost to Rain Man. Weaver made Academy Award history by being the first performer nominated for two movies to not win for either.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "I left (it) feeling cheated, somehow, as if the story had no more insight into Fossey than she apparently had into herself," Roger Ebert wrote. Hinson called Mist frustrating. "You can't help but feel betrayed by how the filmmakers have served their subject," he wrote." "The movie ... is a sort of slurpy business, its love affair as swoony as any from Hollywood in the '40s," wrote Sheila Benson.

-- Critic's Corner, Weaver: "To the extent that the movie will allow her to be, she is magnificent in it," Hinson wrote. Possessing a supreme self-assurance similar to Katharine Hepburn's proved that Sigourney was made for such a role, Janet Maslin wrote. Benson: "She's heroic and frightful at once and it's an uncompromising performance."

-- Gorilla palms as ashtrays? That just sounds tacky as fuck.

-- "Miss Fossey, (imitating Digit) was undoubtedly the most foolhardy, hair-brained lunatic thing I've ever heard of. ... However, since you seem to have been successful, congratulations."

-- Next: A Cry in the Dark. On deck: The Accidental Tourist.