This biographical portrait of Dian Fossey is a meticulously organized character-study work from a strenuous team behind it. The film unscrupulously binds Dian's unusual adventure with an alluring prospect of mystery gorillas' daily lives.
Director Michael Apted chooses a slight mawkish route to expose Dian's journey in the African mountains, channeling the ups-and-downs of her inner state, eventually evolving into an almost lunatic status dragging by her incurable fixation towards the creature. The latter part of the film, when Dian dare to sacrifice anything to protect her gorillas, debatably it has an utmost joy to find something worth dying for, which most of us is still looking for and possibly we will never get it.
At large the film is demystified to watch, apart from a few unavoidably horrendous scenes of massacring the primates. But a top-form Sigourney Weaver alone merits the viewing, even for sundry OTT segments, she carries the impetus all the way till her very last scene, her fully- committed devotion is an exact paragon of a n assiduous actor bringing through a so-so film to an award-worthy stature. Ms. Weaver gleaned two Oscar nominations that year (another is for supporting actress in WORKING GIRL 1988), but miserably ended both hands empty, a mishap later would fall upon my goddess Julianne Moore in 2003. And Sigourney haven't been nominated since and it's a jinx I wish Ms. Moore is not being affected (but the subsequent snubs of A SINGLE MAN 2009 and THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT 2010 are severely swaying my belief).
Back to the film, it has a genuine empathy for whoever holds a heart for the beauty of nature and the fondness for animals. Regardless of Dian's possessed mental overload, her heroic story has effectively rescued the specie from the verge of extinction is the sturdy truth which is recommendable and admirable, maybe the film will be a perfect textbook for high school students and may the world shows bountiful mercy to the afflicted land of Africa.
