海角大神

Should animals 鈥� nonhumans 鈥� be granted personhood under the law? As outlandish as this may seem, the documentary 鈥淯nlocking the Cage,鈥� directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, makes a reasonable case for it.聽

To be clear, not all animals fulfill the personhood criteria set up by Steven Wise, the crusading lawyer behind the Nonhuman Rights Project and the film鈥檚 main protagonist. Great apes, elephants, and cetaceans make the cut, but dogs and cats, for example, won鈥檛 have their day in court. Wise began his law career representing humans but decided early on that animals, so often abused in clinical or zoo settings, needed his advocacy more. He and his cohorts in the Nonhuman Rights Project are obsessed with their mission but they鈥檙e not kooks. (Jane Goodall is on the board.) We see him lecturing a law class at Harvard on the fine points of nonhuman rights, or taking part in a mock trial prior to appearing before a judge finally willing to hear his case. 聽

Wise has a sense of humor about his deeply felt mission, which is probably one of the main ways he keeps sane. He is also not, in the stereotypical sense, an animal 鈥渘ut.鈥� He doesn鈥檛 think chimpanzees are simply hairier humans 鈥� he just thinks that, defenseless, they need protections. The thrust of his legal argument, which emphasizes that 鈥減erson鈥� is a legal concept not synonymous with 鈥渉uman being,鈥� is that these are not animal cases but, rather, civil rights cases. 鈥淲hy,鈥� he asks, 鈥渁re nonhuman animals the slaves of the world?鈥� His goal is to release the animals from a debilitating captivity and have them transferred to far less restrictive sanctuaries. (One such compound already exists in Florida.)

The film follows Wise as he searches out suitable captive chimpanzees only to have several of them die 鈥� of natural causes, apparently 鈥� before anything substantive can be set in motion. He finally hits pay dirt with Hercules and Leo, two chimps that are being housed for medical experimentation at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in upstate New York. He describes the upcoming trial, presided over by a sympathetic judge, as the 鈥渇irst salvo in a strategic war.鈥�

The filmmakers insert clips from 鈥淧lanet of the Apes,鈥� pointing up the far reaches of paranoia some people exhibit when confronted with animal rights issues. We also see a clip of Wise on 鈥淭he Late Show with Stephen Colbert,鈥� in which Colbert, in a not-thinly-veiled reference to the Supreme Court鈥檚 Citizens United decision, tells Wise that if his ape 鈥渨ants to have rights as a person, he should form his own corporation.鈥� The filmmakers are clearly on Wise鈥檚 side, but they are also eminently fair. More than one of Wise鈥檚 adversaries brings up the not-unreasonable slippery slope argument: Today, chimps and elephants; tomorrow, dogs, cats, and chickens?

The film pays lip service to the notion that Wise is a manipulative publicity hound who has found a headline-grabbing niche, but, unless you are far stonier than I am, it鈥檚 difficult to look into the vacant, enraged faces of these caged chimpanzees and not want to rescue them. Even allowing for the anthropomorphic misreadings that humans often apply to animals, it鈥檚 clear that many of the nonhumans in this film deserve a better life. 鈥淯nlocking the Cage鈥� provides some legal ballast for that sentiment. Grade: B+ (This film is not rated.)