JANE’S JOURNEY
DIRECTOR: Lorenz Knauer
CAST: Jane Goodall and Hugo Eric van Lawick
CLASSIFICATION: PG
RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes
RATING: ****
This superbly filmed documentary gives us a glimpse into the private life of primatologist and UN messenger of peace Jane Goodall.
It’s just a glimpse though, since it mostly concentrates on the amazing work she’s been doing for the past 20 years. Now 76, she still displays the energy of someone half her age, spending 300 days of the year travelling, spreading her message of hope for future generations.
She’s an engaging speaker and a tireless campaigner who has spread the word of the Jane Goodall Institute and her Roots and Shoots campaign around the world.
The documentary uses archival material to take us back to the beginning, when she was a 20-something-year-old naive girl from England, studying chimpanzees in what would become Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania.
She became the poster child for what we now think of as environmental activism, never descending into strident talk, always polite, but adamant about her advocacy work.
While she is very frank when she talks about her husbands (there were two) and son, she mostly concentrates on the actual work she was doing. Still, it’s fascinating work and she’s got a great sense of humour which comes through as she tells her story.
A number of well-known personalities, such as Angelina Jolie and Pierce Brosnan, are interviewed about how they met Goodall and the work they do together ,but the most candid remarks come from her son, Hugo Eric van Lawick, known as Grub.
Grub admits to not necessarily understanding her motivation or subscribing to her ideas about conserving the environment, himself preferring a more capitalist approach. The pair have not seen eye to eye on life and only recently has Goodall reached an accommodation with him, but you get the feeling it might just be at the expense of some of her idealism.
While some of the scenes may go out of focus now and then – you try walking through the jungle with a camera on your shoulder – it’s for the most part well shot, showcasing amazing scenery ranging from melting glaciers in Greenland to African refugee camps.
The best part is when she travels to a North American Indian reservation and you get a sense of the hope she engenders in people, especially in the last place you’d expect should need help improving its environment – the middle of the United States.
The archived photos and spectacular old footage are precious and a timeless reminder of the scope of her work. You definitely get a sense of the distances she travels and while you don’t see it, you feel the sheer amount of organisation that goes into the roadshow that is Jane Goodall.
If you liked… The Blue Planet or An Inconvenient Truth… you will like this.