Gorillas in the Mist

"Gorillas in the Mist" is a very worthwhile film and it perfectly highlights Dian Fossey's occasionally groundbreaking work. She actually managed to integrate herself into the mountain gorilla community - this results in some superb shots of the mountain gorilla in its natural habitat and it is genuinely difficult to differentiate between what could possibly be mechanical special effects and the real great apes - and it soon begins to seem as though her gradually all consuming work supersedes many other aspects of her life (she even begins to refer to the gorillas and the mountain they live on as her own) and she willingly sacrifices a blossoming romance with the photographer Bob Campbell in order to stay on the mountain with the gorillas to study them. Dian Fossey achieved recognition through her work and this film ends with the fact the gorilla population continues to multiply as the enduring spirit of her accomplishments lives on, but this coda is juxtaposed with the sobering knowledge that her untimely death remains a mystery.