The Movie that Needs its Own
Psychiatrist
By Fearless Young Orphan
Instinct (1999)
Directed by John Turteltaub
Instinct is not quite awful enough to make it over
to the Chunks of Awfulness page, but you know,
it comes rather close. This is a fitting milestone
in my “Hunks of Happiness” series (Number 20!)
because this one, perhaps more than any of its
predecessors, will be the most difficult subject
about which to find five things to like. Yes, even
harder than the Bobby Jones movie, and that was
really pushing it. If this had bothered to be slightly more funny or tacky, the problem
would have been easily solved by tearing it up and calling it a Chunk. No such luck. So I’m
going to have to tear it up and call it a Hunk.
Specifically my wishy-washiness about the movie (and that’s not an oxymoron, because I
can be specific about being wishy-washy) is thanks to its earnest and tactful try at being a
profound film. I assume that they thought they were being profound. There are a lot of
profound-sounding moments passed around. But Instinct never reveals anything that a
conscientious human being doesn’t already know. The movie is kindergarten-level
humanity. This is not to say that some people couldn’t use such a class, but such people
aren’t going to be bright enough to pick up on this shit anyway. Oh, and it’s species-ism
for me to use the word “humanity.” I’m aware of that.
All right, here’s a plot summary. Anthony Hopkins is Dr. Ethan Powell, who has just been
removed from an African jail and sent to the United States to face trial for the murder of
several African park rangers. Ethan had been living in the wild with a pack of gorillas for
two years. When he is returned to his home town to be psychologically evaluated for his
fitness for trial, he’s mute and violent, and does considerable damage to the folks at
airport security. In town he’s got a wife and daughter Lynn (likable Maura Tierney is the
daughter) who are understandably distraught at his behavior. But since he abandoned
them years ago for the gorillas, they not really surprised by it.
Enter Cuba Gooding Jr. as Dr. Theo Calder, an ambitious academic psychiatrist trying to
make a name for himself, who begs to do the evaluation. The assignment is granted to him
by his boss. Boss is Donald Sutherland, by the by. He’s in this movie to serve as exposition
peppered by mentoring and to be the star cred that is Donald Sutherland. Anyway Theo
does not realize that becoming Ethan’s evaluator will also require him to take a part-time
psychiatric position at the prison, where mentally deranged psychotics are treated with
such violence and disregard that Nurse Ratched starts to look like sort of a sweetie pie.
Over the course of many interviews, Theo gets Ethan to talk to him and reveal the terrible
events that led to his murdering the rangers and losing the will to speak (he gets it back
obviously). Theo’s purpose is to try getting Ethan ready for his hearing to determine
competency.
The filmmakers seemed somewhat confused as to their purposes. We’ve got several
different themes running together here, which are:
1. The dedicated doctor helping his one special patient through methods that others
would call “crazy!”;
2. The message that the world does not belong to us, and that we should respect
nature and wildlife;
3. The message that our society has “caged” us all and we are living an illusion of
control and security which could be fixed if only we’d all go live with some
gorillas; and
4. The story about the overbearing and unfair treatment of the prison inmates,
which is remedied by the angelic Theo against staunch opposition.
These themes are not well-tied together. Nor are they as profound as the movie would
like to believe. I think Walt Whitman already brought up the get-back-to-nature theme
over a century ago in Leaves of Grass. And I think that we’re all aware that humankind is
wrecking the place. And I think that most of us would agree that psychotically deranged
inmates could benefit more from gentle therapeutic treatment than from abuse.
It takes Theo countless interviews (two) to start getting the truth out of Ethan. Part of the
information Theo needs to discover is why Ethan decided to “go gorilla” and live with the
animals, in addition to then killing some park rangers. The movie might build this up to be
quite a revelation, but I found myself less than awe-stricken. He liked the gorilla’s society
more than he liked human society. They were peaceful and interesting. He’s always
enjoyed camping. After long months of patient work with the gorilla clan, Ethan became a
member of the group and was accepted and protected by them. That’s nice. I’d love to
hang out with gorillas. They are some of the most fascinating and beautiful creatures on
Earth. If he could bear sleeping in the jungle, why shouldn’t he hang out with the
creatures he loved?
If you find yourself anywhere near Omaha, Nebraska, I highly recommend a visit to the
award-winning Henry Doorly Zoo, where you will find the Hubbard Gorilla Valley. Gorilla
families live inside this enormous space, looking pretty darn happy and well-cared for, as
far as being in a zoo goes. They are some of the finest entertainment available, even when
just snoozing lazily in the sunlight. I could stand and watch them all day, if not for the
packs and packs of human children, normally attached to their human mothers who are
pushing enormous strollers through the narrow paths of the zoo, making it so that any
semi-intelligent adult who wants to see the park must maneuver through a throng of
strollers wider than tractor-trailers as these mothers try to get two-year-olds interested in
gorillas when all the two-year-old wants to do is suck on his own toes. “Conner, look at
the monkey! Look at the monkey! Conner, look at the big monkey! Conner! Conner!
Conner!” Have you ever tried to get a two-year-old to pay attention to anything? Trust me,
they pay attention to just about exactly what they want, and it’s usually not something you
choose. In the meantime, these majestic gorillas are glancing at us through the reinforced
glass as if they would like to laugh at us but are too polite to do so. I have this fantasy
about letting one of those silverbacks get a hold of a few strollers and “dismantle” them for
me.
Pardon the digression. We were discussing gorillas and the fact that gorillas are amazing,
beautiful, gentle, intelligent, marvelous, humorous beings who are sort of like the really
cool side of us, if we could all just chill out. I’m not saying I want to go live in the jungle.
The gorillas would have to install some plumbing and a computer if they wanted me to
stay overnight. But Ethan didn’t have any trouble with going gorilla. He didn’t believe he
was one of them, just that he had been accepted as a “friend of the tribe,” in a way, and
that they accepted his presence as part of the normal everyday fun. He was probably their
class clown. Pasty hairless ape nerd with stupid short arms! But they would never tease
him; they’re too nice.
Theo rags and rags on Ethan to “tell him what happened in the jungle!” but seriously, is it
really all that much of a mystery? I knew what had gone down as soon as they said “park
rangers.” I had the feeling that these were not “park rangers” so much as “poachers” out
there to kill a buncha gorillas, and that Ethan had done nothing more than try to protect
his gorilla friends. Duh. Ethan isn’t withdrawing because of shame that he’d killed people.
He’s gone bye-bye because he saw creatures he loved being murdered before his eyes.
So we must deal with a lot of this touchy-feely crap. A better movie about touchy-feely
gorilla society was Disney’s Tarzan, which was a great animated film, so lively and thrilling
that the audience applauded at the end. Have you been to many movies that were
applauded? It’s a movie directed at children which can be loved also by adults, but if you
see it, you’ll get more sophisticated love-your-fellow creature lessons than are ever
offered up in Instinct.
We also spend about a third of the film with Theo trying to “make a difference” at the
poorly-run prison, seeing what he can do to curb the almost outrageous mistreatment that
these men suffer. It’s as if a second movie has come to borrow space from the first one.
Probably the filmmakers realized that if they just stuck with the pasty apeman’s tedious
story, the movie would only be an hour long. Therefore we are introduced to many
“colorful” mental patient characters and some really over-the-top nasties as prison guards,
plus the uncaring warden, so that Theo can wage a war of wills against them for better
treatment of the inmates. In doing so, he gains some respect from Ethan, who is watching
starey-eyed from the bleachers. Literally, there are bleachers, because all the inmates
routinely hang out in a gymnasium. Theo gets a little real-world experience in dealing
with slobbering maniacs and has to man up a little bit, so I guess the plots are not
completely separable from one another, but I was still left with the distinct feeling of two,
two, two scripts in one.
This invading plotline is not half as strange as the movie’s turn during the last half hour.
Theo’s plan is to have the doctor acquitted for, I don’t know, justifiable homicide or
something. Donald Sutherland even reminds him that he is not Ethan’s defense attorney,
he is Ethan’s psychiatrist. If Theo wants to be job-hopping that way, he should go work
with Jamie Foxx’s character from Law Abiding Citizen (see the Chunks of Awfulness page
for that treasure). Well anyway, that all goes to hell in a handbasket, thanks to a prison
brawl. So, uh, never mind.
What really is important is the Theo can go to say goodbye to Ethan, who has apparently
rediscovered the joys of catatonia. The monologue that Theo delivers is a howler. He has
formed some kind of emotional bond with the doctor after what appears to be not quite
six hours of therapy, acts like they’re breaking up from a long-term relationship, admits
that Ethan has made him understand what a farce his society and goals really are, and
comes just short of confessing true love, I’d be willing to bet.
What is astonishing—or maybe the word is
“hilarious”—about this is that whatever
powerful wisdom Ethan has imparted to Theo,
it certainly wasn’t anything we were shown on
screen. What we were shown was Ethan
attempting to stab Theo with a pencil, Ethan
trying to choke Theo to death, Ethan ruining all
of Theo’s plans for a great dissertation, Ethan
calling Theo an idiot, and in quiet moments,
“Bonding.”
Ethan’s rambling a predictable if poignant story
to Theo that has less emotional wallop than Disney’s Tarzan. Somehow, Theo translates
all this into a touchy-feely oneness with nature and is changed into a free man. In this
movie, the defining moment of a “free” man is the moment he doesn’t mind getting wet in
the rain. Really? Because I have known men who don’t change their underwear for a
week. Is that freedom too?
SPOILER ALERT. I just have one question for the movie. Ethan breaks out of prison at the
end, and we see him returning to the jungle to be with his gorilla pals. In Africa. An
escaped convict makes it all the way to Africa from the United States? How did he manage
that? Did he swim? I assume his daughter helped him somehow, but how she would even
get her hands on his passport is a mystery to me.
Well, that sounded like a Chunk review. We’re still in the Hunks of Happiness, though. I
just couldn’t get perturbed enough at this movie to really hate it. In its disjointed and
ignorant way, it does try, and though it fails, it does not fail gloriously. The movie could
have been rescued by focusing on Theo’s work at the prison, and letting Ethan’s
predicament already be known. He was defending his family when he killed those men;
now Theo just has to bring Ethan far enough out of grief to defend himself. The message of
man relinquishing his imagined dominion over the Earth would have been implicit in that.
Let’s scratch together five things to like.
1. The performances are as good as they can be, within the material. Sutherland,
Gooding, Hopkins, and Tierney all know what they’re doing.
2. Gorillas are awesome and we get to see a lot of them.
3. The psychology that Theo practices is not completely off the mark, as is often the
case in these movies. In therapy sessions at least, he does tend behave as a
psychiatrist would, until the moment he starts believing he’s a defense attorney.
4. There was enough of a plot working here that I was actually, if only mildly,
interested in how it would all come out.
5. Um . . . can we make the gorillas count twice? There were lots of them . . . no? Well
okay, then the fifth thing to like is Donald Sutherland’s hair. It looks fantastic!
These Hunks of Happiness have often been difficult. They are great fun when I can find a
movie that was unpopular but that appealed to me on some level, prompting me to defend
it. It is much, much harder to find something to like in a movie that is dull and laden with
missteps. Instinct has a 27% rating at rottentomatoes,com, and I won’t argue with that.
The few things I liked were worth exactly that much.