Gorillas in the Mist

Films like this make one ask the inevitable question: “Ain’t White people strange?� The usual White-Savior nonsense Whites allege allows them to interfere in the affairs of foreign countries - always those run by non-Whites. This latter-day imperialism and psychological colonialism is never dramatically-explored and we are thus encouraged to think that Whites are superior to Blacks but, perversely, that gorillas are the equal of Whites. And the central character’s inherent White supremacism is never examined in a meaningful way. More than this, the movie shows Whites loving other species more than their own and seeking-out empathic relations with creatures they cannot breed with; leaving us with the question: “Why?� What cultural, social & emotional emptiness leads them to engage in such pointless activities? Why do Whites think they are uniquely equipped to save the world when they have shown no such acumen in the past? The benefits of conservation are not explained here so this movie preaches to the converted in the naive conviction that others who do not agree with it do not matter. Few really care about this issue and this movie makes a bad fist of explaining why anyone ever should. It has always been clear that, for political and neurotic reasons, Whites wish to save the world for their sole benefit - but what will protect the world from them. An interfering busy-body is just someone who does not know that they exist because they have no life of their own. They struggle purposefully to both evade the emptiness of their existence and the resulting contradictory desire to find substance in a world they repudiate. Excellent acting and solid characterization makes this watchable but never successfully distracts from the emptiness of the heroism on display. The movie is centered around arrogant, self-centered and unsympathetic people who do not know who they are nor how to find out who they are. This reflects the lack of content of a dying culture or a heroin addict unable to stop injecting because they have nothing with which to replace the loss of the drug and make the withdrawal from it easy.