Gorillas in the Mist

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Year:	1988
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Michael Apted
Genre:	Naturalist biopic
Starring:	Sigourney Weaver, Bryan Brown, John Omirah Miluwi
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/
Tagline:	In a land of beauty, wonder and danger, she would follow a dream, fall in love and risk her life to save the mountain gorillas from extinction
Favourite line:	"You like this ring? You want to keep the hand this ring is on? If I see or hear or smell you anywhere near my gorillas, you'll be writing with your other hand and I'll have a new ashtray."

You know, it's not often I sit down to watch a 'normal' movie, but this one peaked my interest. I like Sigourney (Alien etc), but, more crucially, I have a real interest in natural history and have seen pretty much everything the mighty David Attenborough has ever done. So, with that in mind, I sat down to watch what I thought would be a schmaltzy, sickly feel good film about a woman and her gorillas.
How wrong I was.

Sigourney plays Dian Fossey, a ballsy individual with a keen interest in the plight of the Rwandan Mountain Gorillas, whose numbers have been dwindling frighteningly due to poaching. She sets off, after bullying the leader of the expedition into allowing her to go, and spends the next six weeks tracking the beasts. Once located, she gradually, gradually, over a long period of time, earns their trust, and soon is accepted as almost one of their own. It really is lovely.
But all is not well. The country she is in (The Congo) is in the midst of a civil war, and it isn't long before she is booted out, and must make her way through Rwanda to get to the Rwandan side of the mountains upon which the gorillas dwell. Even then, she is beset by problems, as poaching seems to be running amok, and there is no shortage of wealthy foreigners eager for a gorilla hand for an ashtray or a gorilla head mounted on the wall. Terrifying but true, which begs the question, what kind of sick minded freak do you have to be to get any pleasure from a gorilla hand ashtray.
For fucks sake.
Shoot them now.
Anyway, Fossey soon comes to think of both the gorilla and the mountain as her own and, in a savage land where life is cheap, her antics can only end in one way; her untimely death which, to this day, remains an unsolved mystery.

Compelling, intriguing and genuinely touching at times, this is a heart warming movie with a sinister underbelly, and the very fact that it is all based on a true story of a truly remarkable lady only adds to the pathos.
A great film.