The naturalist revisits the family of apes he had a goosebump-inducingly famous encounter with 50 years ago. You’ll find yourself overcome with awe
T
he most famous sequence in all of wildlife film-making happened 48 years ago. During the filming of Life on Earth – the groundbreaking BBC show that set the blueprint of nature programming as we know it today – David Attenborough crept through the forests of Rwanda, and unexpectedly found himself being playfully set upon by a family of gorillas. As they clambered over him, Attenborough turned to camera and said: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”
Almost half a century on, the sequence still has the power to give you goosebumps. This is possibly why it has formed the backbone of a new documentary. A Gorilla Story is a much starrier affair than its predecessor – it was directed by the Oscar-winning James Reed and boasts Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer – but its conceit is fascinating: after all this time, how are those same gorillas doing?
As the film shows, that depends on who you are. If you’re a general conservationist, then this is almost universally good news. Back in the 1970s, Rwanda’s gorillas were being poached almost to the point of extinction, but the conservation work catalysed by Dian Fossey (and, although he’s too modest to admit this, the huge spotlight shone on the animals by Attenborough) means that numbers are almost fully recovered.
