UNLOCKING THE CAGE (D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus). 91 minutes. Opens Friday (August 19). See listing. Rating: NNNN
Lawyer Steven Wise has been fighting on behalf of animals for decades, asserting their personhood in order to win them habeas corpus rights and thus spring them from abusive captivity in labs and zoos and resettle them in preserves.
In Unlocking The Cage, Wise argues a series of cases for the Nonhuman Rights Project – most powerfully on behalf of a chimpanzee named Tommy who’s spent most of his life caged in his owner’s shed.
Directors D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus are renowned for their direct, unmediated filmmaking, and this doc is no different, ultimately finding its thesis statement in a sequence where Wise and his team work to encapsulate his 30-year crusade in a single core principle: the detention of an autonomous being is, simply, inhuman.
That idea should stay with you long after the credits roll.
