PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Gorillas in the Mist: The Adventure of Dian Fossey (1988)

Gorillas in the Mist: The Adventure of Dian Fossey (1988)

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Released 1-Apr-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Drama Featurette-9:15
Listing-Cast & Crew
Theatrical Trailer-1:58
Rating Rated M
Year Of Production 1988
Running Time 124:06
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (53:28) Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4,5 Directed By Michael Apted
Studio
Distributor

Warner Home Video
Starring Sigourney Weaver
Bryan Brown
Julie Harris
John Omirah Miluwi
Constantin Alexandrov
Iain Cuthbertson
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $29.95 Music Maurice Jarre


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
French
Italian
Dutch
Arabic
Spanish
Portuguese
German
Romanian
English for the Hearing Impaired
Italian for the Hearing Impaired
Smoking Yes, frequent
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    I'm not a big fan of "true-life" stories. Real life often fails to produce the moments of high-powered excitement that are the stuff of escapist drama. Besides, that's one of the things I look for in a movie: an escape from real life, and the comfort of knowing "it's not real, it's just a movie". Still, I was impressed by this film when I saw it in the cinema (I was dragged along...). Much of Dian Fossey's life seems like it was a drama.

    This must rate as one of the two best "real-life" tales of women in Africa with wild animals — the other is Born Free. That may be, at least in part, because I'm not sure that I've seen any others. But both are good films.

    This film starts in 1966, when we see Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) attending a lecture by Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson, playing a real man who is remembered by the Leakey Foundation) — he is claiming that study of the great apes, gorillas in particular, leads to insight in prehistoric man (literally "pre - historic", in the sense of before recorded history). She wants to help him, to study the gorillas. She has no skills at studying animals, but she has trained as a physical therapist, working with disabled children, and she has taken some pre-veterinary courses. He tries to discourage her, at first gently, then more firmly. She doesn't discourage easily.

    The next thing we see is her arriving in Africa, being told to select a tracker and some porters, buy groceries, and being sent off into the hinterland. Things don't go well. At first, she and her tracker, Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi) can't find any gorillas. Just after she finally does, she's thrown out of The Congo by soldiers. She manages to make her way to Roz Carr (played here by Julie Harris, but a real person, nonetheless), an American expatriate living in Rwanda. Dian is despondent, defeated, and depressed. Roz Carr manages to turn that around, but it's Dian who manages to solve her problem.

    The other significant players in this drama are Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown), a photographer for National Geographic (her research is funded by National Geographic), and a significant number of gorillas. And the poachers. That is the sour tasting part. It's hard to stomach the idea that poachers will kill gorillas just to take their heads and hands — the heads as wall ornaments, and the hands as ashtrays — for insensitive people in supposedly civilized countries. The film paints an unglamorous picture of the men who collect animals for zoos, too (it made me think twice about that subject).

    It's genuinely awe-inspiring to watch Sigourney Weaver interacting with live wild gorillas. We are not talking about men in gorilla suits here. In the featurette it is made clear that not all of the gorilla footage was planned — the charge of the silverback was unexpected, and Sigourney Weaver simply froze (thinking, she says, "I hope they get the shot!" — they did). Scary stuff, but this film wouldn't have worked otherwise.

    Apparently this project was begun in cooperation with the real Dian Fossey, shortly before her untimely death. It began again shortly afterwards. It's a warts-and-all look at the lady. It deals with her obsession, her willingness to do anything, to sacrifice anything, to protect the gorillas. And it makes it all believable. That's impressive.

    There are parts that don't quite ring true, mostly (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) the romantic element. File that under "no movie's perfect".

    In the end, this is a worthwhile film, for all that it may make you despair in the human species. After the credits have run, there's a subtle hint for donations to the fund for protecting gorillas (set up in memory of Dian Fossey and her friends) — I'd say it's well-justified.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which is close to the intended ratio of 1.85:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    This film is a bit soft, especially in long shots, but close-ups are clear. Shadow detail is rather good, but there are moments where things get fairly black. There's no trouble with film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is rather good, with one odd exception. There are a number of mentions in the script of Dian Fossey's red hair, and yet Sigourney Weaver's hair looks auburn at best, and mostly brunette — it seems a strange inconsistency (for that matter, the shot we see of the real Dian Fossey doesn't show her looking red-headed, so maybe the flaw is in the script). There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are lots of film artefacts, but they are mostly quite small and untroubling. There are a couple of more medium-size spots and flecks, but they are never large enough to complain about.

    There is a bit of aliasing, but it's never bad enough to put you off unless you are exceptionally sensitive. There's no serious moiré, and no MPEG artefacts.

    All up, this is a pretty reasonable presentation of a fifteen year old film.

    There are subtitles in nine languages, including English, plus Hearing Impaired captions in English and Italian. I only watched the English subtitles. They are well-timed, quite accurate, and easy to read. I spotted a couple of minor errors, like "think" in place of "thing".

    The disc is single-sided, dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change is at 53:28, in the middle of a scene, but it's hard to spot, because it comes at a natural pause.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This disc has three audio tracks; English, French, and Italian, all Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded. I only listened to the English soundtrack. The surround encoding doesn't lead to anything significant being steered into the surrounds, but more sound is steered into the centre channel. The Region 1 is reported to have a 5.1 soundtrack, but I can't say that I see the point — this movie works perfectly well with the near-mono sound that we get.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand (well, the English portion is — there is no translation of other languages). There are no audio sync problems.

    The score, from Maurice Jarre, is decent, without being outstanding. It gets the job done.

    The surrounds are essentially unused, as is the subwoofer. There's some quite decent bass in the soundtrack, but it comes out of the fronts, rather than the sub, unless you have set your fronts to small.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, but easy to navigate.

Featurette (9:15)

    This is a short, but very interesting, piece. It includes a shot of the real Dian Fossey. It explains that the film crew had to haul everything up into the mountains of central Africa (elevation 13,000 feet!) because they were forbidden to use helicopters.

    I rather liked Bryan Brown's comment: he didn't want the epitaph "gee, no one's been killed by a gorilla before" — he was a little nervous about getting so close to them.

Cast and Crew

    This is, unfortunately, nothing more than a one page listing showing three of the cast and one of the crew. I won't spoil the excitement by telling you who.

Theatrical Trailer (1:58)

    Nothing special in the way of a trailer.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 1 is reported to have a 5.1 soundtrack, but it's reported to be a fairly poor 5.1 effort, with a mono surround signal — I'd guess that it's little, if at all, better than the soundtrack on the Region 4 disc. However, the Region 1 disc is missing the featurette, which is the most valuable of the extras on this disc. I'd suggest that the Region 4 disc is the better because of it.

Summary

    Gorillas In The Mist is that rare animal, the interesting "real-life" film, presented well on DVD.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras, although sparse, include an interesting little featurette.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Tony Rogers (bio-degrading: making a fool of oneself in a bio...)
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDPanasonic DVD-RP82, using Component output
DisplaySony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationDenon AVC-A1SE
SpeakersFront Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5

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