David Denby
“It's been said that to play tragedy, an actor needs to be tall; and by the same elementary rules of justice, the same should be true of actresses. In this fall's Gorillas in the Mist--the passion play of murdered American primatologist Dian Fossey--Sigourney Weaver has at last found a role worthy of her stature. Fossey . . . saved a species of magnificent mountain gorillas almost certain extinction. But at a terrible cost.
In the early scenes, Dian, in her middle thirties, finds herself on her own, a lone white woman in central Africa, and Weaver, making her tense and a bit angry, does things she ahs done before. But when Dian reaches her mountaintop in Rwanda and finds the gorillas, the performance begins to bloom. At first the animals are wary, holding back from the slender, smooth, remarkably un-gorillalike beauty curled up on the ground. But soon they grow curious, nuzzling her, finally taking her hand, and the chip drops off Weaver's shoulder. By turns she is awed and fiercely protective. Dian Fossey's salvationist role set [sic] her in inevitable opposition to the native poachers who had slaughtered the animals for generations, cutting off hands and heads and selling them to traders as sourvenirs. When Dian's favorite, the silver-backed male Digit, is killed, the rage that has been boiling in Weaver explodes.
Half Medea, half Savonarola, Fossey burns down native huts, kidnaps a child, stages a mock hanging; and through all of this, Weaver's anger grows more scarily self-righteous. As she stalks around her mountaintop, her jaw juts, the color drains from her face, and her mouth is set ferociously (some dental templates help). She is not just angry but dictatorial, inhuman in her fury. "Dian's anger was so cold--a cold blue flame," she says. "By the end, in the scenes before she's murdered, I felt I was on a roll. Everything had built toward the end, and I felt I could let go."
It was perhaps the boldest letting go thus far for an extremely elegant woman . . . .
David Denby
New York, Fall Preview, date?
I can think of few recent performances that have dominated a movie as thoroughly as Sigourney Weaver dominates Gorillas in the Mist. Through its first half, . . . [a] heroine stuggles against reversals to perform a great deed. But then the obsessional side of Dian Fossey's character takes over, and Weaver becomes a hurricane. Fossey enters her own heart of darkness, from which death is the only release.
Early on, as Fossey approaches the great naturalist Louis Leakey . . ., Weaver seems a little stiff; and when Fossey arrives in the Congo and suffers her initial problems . . ., Weaver makes her tense, huffy, a rather dislikably self-centered woman who, in our eyes (though perhaps not in the filmmakers'), prsumes a larger degree of cooperation in a war-torn country than she probably should. . . . [T]he movie is entirely incurious about the native cultures Fossey is busting into and attempting to instruct. Only Fossey's drives and needs matter. [The point, of course, is that the gorillas' drives and needs matter, too.] That the poacher who slaughter the gorillas for profit might be hungry and have no other way of earning aliving isn't an issue anyone raises.
But all is forgiven when Dian Fossey . . . comes into contact with the animals . . . .
[After Fossey's lover, the photographer played by Bryan Brown, leaves,] the true Passion of Dian Fossey commences. Fossey becomes the surrogate mother of a species. Fighting the Batwa poachers and the white trader who hires them, she sustains the kind of rage that enhances and diminishes a human being at the same time. Weaver stalks around her mountain domain, her jaw jutting out, her shoulders hunched forward. She looks more and more like a gorilla, though far less gentle, giving full rein to Fossey's prudishness, censoriousness, cruelty. Could Fossey have saved the animals with diplomacy or by finding other ways for the Batwa to make money? The movie doesn't ask: perhaps it shouldn't. This Dian Fossey is a tragic figure. She is to be feared and pitied.
David Denby
New York, October 3, 1988
In the early scenes, Dian, in her middle thirties, finds herself on her own, a lone white woman in central Africa, and Weaver, making her tense and a bit angry, does things she ahs done before. But when Dian reaches her mountaintop in Rwanda and finds the gorillas, the performance begins to bloom. At first the animals are wary, holding back from the slender, smooth, remarkably un-gorillalike beauty curled up on the ground. But soon they grow curious, nuzzling her, finally taking her hand, and the chip drops off Weaver's shoulder. By turns she is awed and fiercely protective. Dian Fossey's salvationist role set [sic] her in inevitable opposition to the native poachers who had slaughtered the animals for generations, cutting off hands and heads and selling them to traders as sourvenirs. When Dian's favorite, the silver-backed male Digit, is killed, the rage that has been boiling in Weaver explodes.
Half Medea, half Savonarola, Fossey burns down native huts, kidnaps a child, stages a mock hanging; and through all of this, Weaver's anger grows more scarily self-righteous. As she stalks around her mountaintop, her jaw juts, the color drains from her face, and her mouth is set ferociously (some dental templates help). She is not just angry but dictatorial, inhuman in her fury. "Dian's anger was so cold--a cold blue flame," she says. "By the end, in the scenes before she's murdered, I felt I was on a roll. Everything had built toward the end, and I felt I could let go."
It was perhaps the boldest letting go thus far for an extremely elegant woman . . . .
David Denby
New York, Fall Preview, date?
I can think of few recent performances that have dominated a movie as thoroughly as Sigourney Weaver dominates Gorillas in the Mist. Through its first half, . . . [a] heroine stuggles against reversals to perform a great deed. But then the obsessional side of Dian Fossey's character takes over, and Weaver becomes a hurricane. Fossey enters her own heart of darkness, from which death is the only release.
Early on, as Fossey approaches the great naturalist Louis Leakey . . ., Weaver seems a little stiff; and when Fossey arrives in the Congo and suffers her initial problems . . ., Weaver makes her tense, huffy, a rather dislikably self-centered woman who, in our eyes (though perhaps not in the filmmakers'), prsumes a larger degree of cooperation in a war-torn country than she probably should. . . . [T]he movie is entirely incurious about the native cultures Fossey is busting into and attempting to instruct. Only Fossey's drives and needs matter. [The point, of course, is that the gorillas' drives and needs matter, too.] That the poacher who slaughter the gorillas for profit might be hungry and have no other way of earning aliving isn't an issue anyone raises.
But all is forgiven when Dian Fossey . . . comes into contact with the animals . . . .
[After Fossey's lover, the photographer played by Bryan Brown, leaves,] the true Passion of Dian Fossey commences. Fossey becomes the surrogate mother of a species. Fighting the Batwa poachers and the white trader who hires them, she sustains the kind of rage that enhances and diminishes a human being at the same time. Weaver stalks around her mountain domain, her jaw jutting out, her shoulders hunched forward. She looks more and more like a gorilla, though far less gentle, giving full rein to Fossey's prudishness, censoriousness, cruelty. Could Fossey have saved the animals with diplomacy or by finding other ways for the Batwa to make money? The movie doesn't ask: perhaps it shouldn't. This Dian Fossey is a tragic figure. She is to be feared and pitied.
David Denby
New York, October 3, 1988
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