The scientists who study primates are primates themselves. This point is made in the opening minute of Frederick Wiseman’s 1974 film PRIMATE.After the title appears on screen, we see photographs of scientists from the past, with varying amounts of facial hair, and then cut to live shots of some of the animals in captivity at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, followed by a shot of two heavily bearded scientists observing gorillas who are cavorting behind bars. This sequence makes clear that while the researchers are obsessively studying the animals, Wiseman will train his camera and curiosity on the primates who happen to wear ties, clutch clipboards, and speak into tape recorders.

Juxtaposing the emotionally detached behavior of the researchers (who say things like “Let’s use 60 cycles to see if we can get the same ejaculate from John…remember at 20 cycles we’re getting better erections”) with the raw and sympathetic emotionalism of the gorillas, monkeys, and baboons, PRIMATE is, as Wiseman says “a rather bizarre comedy–I think it’s a riot.” But as the scientists perform their seemingly callous experiments, all for the sake of studying brain localization, sexual and aggressive behavior, and artificial insemination, the process is startlingly graphic and disturbing, including vivisection, vomiting, and–most excruciatingly–an extended scene detailing the decapitation of a monkey so that its freshly removed brain can be sliced and studied.

The eighth entry in Wiseman’s still-ongoing study of social institutions, PRIMATE was his most controversial film since his harrowing 1967 debut, TITICUT FOLLIES, which chronicled the abusive treatment of patients at a hospital for the criminally insane. Geoffrey Bourne, director of the Yerkes center, complained in a New York Times letter to the editor that “PRIMATE is a desecration of a noble institution and its dedicated staff.” Abruptly cancelling his scheduled appearance on a PBS panel discussion about the film, Bourne called PRIMATE “a perversion that doesn’t bear any relationship to reality.” In response, Wiseman pointed out that none of the film’s events were staged. Another critique, by sociologist and science ethicist Amitai Etzioni, published in the Times under the headline “PRIMATE is Unnecessarily Cruel to Scientists,” criticized Wiseman for not following the science experiments from the admittedly disturbing phase of “data collection” to its “processing, drawing of conclusions, to their interpretation and application.” Although Etzioni attacked Wiseman for not celebrating the benefits of research, we do hear one of leaders of the Yerkes center warning about threats to federal science funding from Washington by claiming that “all research is useful,” and citing the accidental discovery of penicillin as an example of “the usefulness of useless knowledge.” Animal-rights activists saw the film as a powerful statement against vivisection and other abusive forms of treatment. (In one scene, five scientists are gathered around a monkey who has a tube attached to his penis, so that he can be electrically coaxed to ejaculate).

Still from PRIMATE. Courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center.

Wiseman’s purpose here is not to be an advocate for scientific research or for animal rights. “Social reality is infinitely more complicated than ideology,” he has said. And although his filming method, which avoids narration, and allows the events he films to speak for themselves, bears some resemblance to the scientific method–gathering and sharing evidence–Wiseman has frequently made it clear that he is not looking for objectivity. He prefers the label “reality fictions” to “documentary,” and says that his results are “subjective, selective, and impressionistic.”

There is one very useful bit of biological science in the film, when a scientist explains the evolutionary fork in the road between the ancestors of apes and humans; the former had a lower center of gravity, bending towards the ground and walking with arms as well as feet. The ancestors of homo sapiens learned to stand, freeing their hands to make and use tools. The end result is on full display at Yerkes, which is as much a prison as a laboratory, with the animals as captives, and the humans prodding, controlling, measuring, and abusing their subjects with an enormous array of tools. The open-eyed, helpless, playful, anguished animals seem much more human than the scientists, who are beholden to their technology; Wiseman captures an endless array of gadgets and measuring instruments, including stop watches, tape recorders, hemoglobinometers, oscilloscopes, frequency generators, and more. In its vision of the soullessness of the technological age, PRIMATE would make for a perfect double feature with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.In both films, the humans seem detached from feelings. HAL is the most emotional character in the Kubrick film, and the animals provide the emotional core of PRIMATE.

And therefore, it is the animals that the viewer relates to. And ultimately, this leads us to Wiseman’s real subject–you, the viewer. More than nearly any other filmmaker, Wiseman deliberately avoids explanation, giving us films that have the ambiguity and richness of real life, and asks us to interpret and make sense of what we are seeing. Now more than fifty years old, PRIMATE feels especially prescient, asking us to comprehend a world where we try to maintain our souls while we are, like the animals at Yerkes, being controlled by technology and endlessly mined for data.

• Child Size: Claire Simon on ELEMENTARY
• Dr. Jared Taglialatela of Ape Initiative on SASQUATCH SUNSET
• The Cost of Endless Growth