Documentary gets personal, sort of, with primate pioneer Jane Goodall
“So,” Brett Morgen began, “you’ve been telling your story for so many years. Do you get tired of answering the same questions?”
Jane Goodall stared back at the filmmaker, her expression unmoving.
“Depends on who’s asking the questions,” she replied.
The primatologist, who began studying chimpanzees in Africa in 1960 at age 26, did not wish to be interviewed, period.
At 83, Goodall had already done so many interviews in her life. Morgen was already going through 140 hours of footage that had been hidden for more than 50 years in National Geographic’s archives; couldn’t the filmmaker just repurpose an old interview?
But at the urging of her colleagues at the Jane Goodall Institute — “we need the exposure,” they said — she agreed to participate, and ended up spending two full days with Morgen at her home in Tanzania.
“I guess Brett’s quite persuasive,” Goodall said with a shrug.
The resulting documentary “Jane” — which opens Friday for a one-week run at the Times Cinema, 5906 W. Vliet St. — is one of the best-reviewed movies of the year, and the winner of the best feature award at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.
That doesn’t mean Morgen had an easy job getting Goodall to talk about her personal life.
“I had to pull it out of her,” said the filmmaker, best known for directing the Kurt Cobain documentary “Montage of Heck” and “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” about Hollywood producer Robert Evans.
For the past 30 years, Goodall has shifted her emphasis from research to conservation, traveling the world giving lectures, visiting schools and teaching young people about the environment. She spends more than 300 days a year on the road and has not spent more than three weeks at home, consecutively, in more than three decades.
Asked why she keeps up such a rigorous pace, Goodall was quick to respond.
“I have a message to give,” she said plainly, “and I don’t know how many years I have left. I care about the future and the wild places and my grandchildren.”
It’s a sentiment that brings Morgen to tears — and he’s not a weepy guy.
But after spending time watching the old footage — and getting to know her on the film’s promotional tour — Morgen holds deep affection for Goodall. Any time they’re asked to take a photo together, she makes goofy faces at him — “she likes to have fun, but people are so reverential around her,” he said.
“She’s doing what she wants to be doing. I’m not going to say she’s the most selfless person in the world,” the filmmaker said. “Here she is at the twilight of her life, trying to save the world for my children. She knows her days are numbered.”