A Gorilla Story: Review Told by David Attenborough – Like one of our last meetings with a beloved relative | television

TThe most iconic sequence in wildlife filmmaking happened 48 years ago. While filming Life on Earth – the pioneering BBC program that set the blueprint for nature programming as we know it today – David Attenborough crept through the jungles of Rwanda and unexpectedly found himself attacked by a family of gorillas. As they climbed on it, Attenborough turned to the camera and said: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”

Nearly half a century later, this sequence still has the power to give you chills. Perhaps that’s why it formed the backbone of a new documentary. Gorilla Story is a far more starry tale than its predecessor – it’s directed by Oscar-winner James Reid and boasts Leonardo DiCaprio as executive producer – but its conceit is astonishing: after all this time, how are these same gorillas doing?

As the movie shows, it depends on who you are. If you’re a conservationist in general, this is almost universally good news. In the 1970s, gorillas in Rwanda were poached almost to extinction, but the conservation work galvanized by Dian Fossey (and, though he is too humble to admit it, the huge spotlight Attenborough has placed on the animals) means that numbers have almost completely recovered.

But if you’re a gorilla yourself, things are a bit more complicated. The Pablo Collection, as the family is known – named after the young gorilla most attracted to Attenborough – finds itself in a constant state of flux. All the animals Attenborough met have died, and their offspring rule the roost. Gecurasi, the dominant silverbuck, is aging. A new competitor named Ubwuzu has noticed this, and is now throwing his weight in every possible direction.

Everyone knows that the cardinal sin of watching a wildlife film is anthropomorphizing the animals too much, mapping our human thoughts and experiences onto animals that don’t share those thoughts and experiences with us. However, it is clear that Obuwozo is a bit deceitful. He overpowers Jekurasi in a show of dominance, then lashes out at a younger gorilla on the verge of puberty named Imphora, who spends most of the film covered in bruises and cuts that Opozo has doled out in an attempt to keep him in his place.

As Attenborough points out: “There are perhaps only so many blows a gorilla can take.” So it is no wonder that Emefora sneaks back into the family when Obuozo is out with his mistress and kills his child. Violence, power struggle, sadness; This is the stuff of high drama.

Maybe the drama is too high actually, because all of this is crammed into just over an hour of film, giving the whole thing a halting feel. When the characterization of the animals – their personalities and individual roles in the tight social network of their families – is so beautifully depicted, you can’t help but wish it had been given the lengthy treatment it deserved.

What also works against the film is that all of these shots of epic gorilla death or glory are in direct competition with what may be the main attraction of the whole thing: David Attenborough.

Attenborough turns 100 in a few weeks, which means every appearance here feels spontaneously elegiac. When he reads about the Rwanda encounter from his memoirs – for the love of God, someone publishes these memoirs! -You find yourself moved by admiration for the man and his ability to express the moment with just the right meter.

This reaches its emotional peak when he talks about Pablo, a gorilla who grows up to become an unconventionally successful silverback and is killed while protecting his family from a rival group at the age of thirty-three. For all the (magnificent) natural shots captured in “A Gorilla Story,” what will stick most in the mind is the unbearably poignant sight of a nearly 100-year-old man thinking back to a dear old friend and saying, “I will never forget him.”

Attenborough is clearly not feeling nostalgia. This is the second new project he has launched in two weeks, which indicates a preference for forward momentum. But for those of us who grew up with him — that is, all of us — this feels like one of the last chances we’ll ever have to sit at the feet of a beloved relative.