Jane

Stitched together with recently discovered film of her Gombe encampment and personal interviews with Jane Goodall, Brett Morgen’s documentary, Jane gives us an intimate portrait of one of the 20^th century’s most fascinating women.

With no scientific training or education, the young, single and beautiful Jane Goodall dispatched to Africa in 1957 to observe chimpanzees in the wild, and to live among them- something no human being had ever done before.   Leakey chose her because he was looking for someone with an open mind, a love of animals and unending patience.  He found it all and more in Goodall.  With her mother in tow as support personnel, Goodall began her great adventure to attempt to study these great apes and attempt to identify genetic antecedents to human behavior from our closest primate cousins.

The film clips were fascinating as this pretty young woman marched up and down the Gombe valleys alone, hoping to catch glimpses of these creatures.  Goodall’s incredible fearlessness is striking as she disregarded the poisonous snakes that abounded in the territory.  For months, the chimps simply ran away at the sight of her.  But she persisted, and with patience, over time, the chimpanzees accepted her presence and permitted her to have intimate interactions among them, and participate in grooming, playing, and even allowing her to play with their young.  The possibility that one of these powerful beasts could turn on her at any moment and kill her never seemed to cross her mind. 

Goodall’s undeterred passion gave us incredible insights into both chimpanzees and our own condition.  She famously discovered that chimps not only used tools but were able to make them (stripping leaves off sticks to use to harvest termites), a skill thought only to belong to humans.   She observed and documented their deep emotional life.   Chimpanzees had distinct personalities; they mourned their dead, experienced jealousy, displayed affection.   She also had insights into their darker side-  chimps, like humans, were capable of horrendous acts - making war and killing each other in brutal fashion.

Her personal journey is as interesting as her work.  She began her life’s work by utterly rejecting the roles of motherhood and wife as life goals and very early on developed a love of animals.  Her father apparently was largely absent from her life and Goodall got her determination and spirit from a very encouraging mother, and her mother’s emotional support remained important to her throughout her life.

Later, however, she did fall in love and marry the nature photographer, Hugo van Lawick.   The two had a child together, and the film devotes a substantial portion to the interweaving of her marriage and motherhood with her work on the Gombe encampment.  The arrangement raises interesting issues of marriage and child rearing.  Goodall spoke of the parallels between her own motherhood and the motherhood of her subjects.  

Eventually, Goodall chooses.  She sends her young son back to Great Britain to be schooled as her concerns about a lack of socialization in the jungle began to worry her.  Similarly, when the funding to keep Hugo at Gombe runs out, Hugo is forced to ply his trade on the Serengeti.  Again, she chooses.  The separation becomes too much for the marriage to bear.  Neither is willing to compromise and Jane and Hugo eventually divorce.  In both cases, motherhood and marriage remained subordinated to her primary love---her work.   

Jane Goodall belongs in the pantheon of fearless, passionate women that found their life’s work and threw themselves at it, women like Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Babe Didrikson Zacharias (for a great read on Didrikson, read Wonder Girl by Don Van Natta).  Each of these women have a fascinating story to tell as each rejected societal norms.

Goodall is a captivating figure, mostly because of her sheer fearlessness and defiance.  She defied the conventional role of a woman in the 60’s.  She defied the traditional paths of the scientific establishment.  She defied traditional views of marriage and motherhood.  Because of her unwillingness to be bound by these things, she was able to do something spectacular - redefine and recast our definition of what it means to be human.  

Jane is a wonderful film about a fascinating person.