I saw this when it was shown on TV, and I was eight years old in 1998 (though of course I may have been a couple of years older when I saw it). Even then, I can remember it being absolutely captivating.
The female gorilla (Gor's mother) was called Mary. Probably the part I remember most was when Dr. Forester's colleague said there must have been a mix-up, because Gor could not have been born from a gorilla. Dr. Forester said: "It IS Mary's baby, but the sperm was human." This was even before I knew what "sperm" meant, but I guessed from the context that it meant the father. I must have been too young (not prejudiced enough, perhaps) to be shocked by the suggestion that a man had had sex with a gorilla.
It was a striking moment when a young Gor finally found himself able to articulate speech, having been bullied at school for perpetually making a "snah" kind of sound. He stood in the branches of a tree and shouted with pride: "I'm Gor!" The story also covered Gor as an adult, when he voluntarily chose to meet his own mother. Would she recognise him?
So if this could happen in real life, would we really send the human-gorilla hybrid to a school like any other child? This is just one question raised in an amazing insight into ethics in 1988, nearly 20 years before permission to use hybrid human-animal stem cells in experimentation was granted, and just one question that we now need to ask ourselves. Surely we have the answer after twenty years of thought, right?
Ahead of its time of course (as other people have already said), this is an important piece of film that should not be forgotten. See this if you get the chance, and marvel that it really was made in the 1980s. It was my first experience of an awesome performance by Charles Dance, but it certainly was not the last.
The female gorilla (Gor's mother) was called Mary. Probably the part I remember most was when Dr. Forester's colleague said there must have been a mix-up, because Gor could not have been born from a gorilla. Dr. Forester said: "It IS Mary's baby, but the sperm was human." This was even before I knew what "sperm" meant, but I guessed from the context that it meant the father. I must have been too young (not prejudiced enough, perhaps) to be shocked by the suggestion that a man had had sex with a gorilla.
It was a striking moment when a young Gor finally found himself able to articulate speech, having been bullied at school for perpetually making a "snah" kind of sound. He stood in the branches of a tree and shouted with pride: "I'm Gor!" The story also covered Gor as an adult, when he voluntarily chose to meet his own mother. Would she recognise him?
So if this could happen in real life, would we really send the human-gorilla hybrid to a school like any other child? This is just one question raised in an amazing insight into ethics in 1988, nearly 20 years before permission to use hybrid human-animal stem cells in experimentation was granted, and just one question that we now need to ask ourselves. Surely we have the answer after twenty years of thought, right?
Ahead of its time of course (as other people have already said), this is an important piece of film that should not be forgotten. See this if you get the chance, and marvel that it really was made in the 1980s. It was my first experience of an awesome performance by Charles Dance, but it certainly was not the last.
