Instinct

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Instinct (1999) is not an impartial film. It is an indictment of how humans are dangers to the Earth. It stresses how people are so self-centered that they fool themselves into thinking they should be the masters of their world.

The opening shows gorillas in the wild, where the land stretches out far into the distance. It then shifts to a man, Dr. Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins in a terrific performance), the last name implying a physical punch, who is a famous anthropologist. He was missing for two years and now looks animal-like with scruffy long hair and beard. He is wearing chains in a cage in Africa. We are used to seeing animals held captive for no reason except for our amusement, but not humans, unless they have committed crimes. Ethan has broken human laws. Guards transport him in a truck with growling guard dogs. By the time they arrive at their destination, the dogs are docile and Ethan is petting them. The man has connected to the animal in himself and thus to other non-human creatures.

People from the U. S. State Department arrive and say they have Ethan now. Even though they remove the chains, he still has no freedom. The shift to Dr. Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) treating a psychiatric patient under the approving eyes of his teacher, Professor Ben Hillard (Donald Sutherland), tells us that Ethan will be examined as a psychiatric patient. We discover that Ethan used to work at the same university as the psychiatrists and he killed two people and injured three others which explains his imprisonment. For two years he has not said a word, which emphasizes his detachment from human society. Theo exhibits pride when he says he can handle the research on Ethan’s case in a very short time.

When alarms go off at the facility where his captors have brought the now primitive Ethan, he becomes agitated and attacks all those trying to restrain his freedom. He has reverted to instinct, not contemplative intelligence, and is in a flight or fight mode. When he sees his daughter, Lynn (Maura Tierney), he stops his resistance and is overcome by guards. Her appearance summons up his connection to family, which, we later discover, was the reason for his violence in the jungle.

Theo (the name suggests “theocratic,” that is, a god-centered governance, ironic, as we discover) is only a resident but wants Ben to give him Ethan’s evaluation. He is ambitious and sees Ethan as a way of becoming famous by writing a bestselling book about the case.

Ethan is at an institution for the criminally insane called Harmony Bay, an ironic title since there is no “harmony” there. Theo must compromise his lofty ambition to treat the other inmates.

                                    

Theo’s first encounter with Ethan shows how the prison overmedicates him and uses a Taser on the man if he does not comply with rules. There is a literal line across the table that he is not allowed to cross. There is only an attempt to control, not understand him. Theo meets Lynn who says that her father was distant, obsessed with his work with little concern for his family before he went to Africa. Theo borrows pictures that she took when she visited Africa. When he shows them to Ethan, he smashes the picture of her. When Theo acknowledges that Ethan would rather be an animal, he adds that his daughter wants him back. He finally speaks and says “Goodbye” to his daughter’s photo. He now shows that he is not a psychotic divorced from reality by saying, “Have I made your fucking day?” Theo sees the picture of the jungle as his home, not his house in America. Theo promises to cut his medication if Ethan will tell him about Africa. Why does he allow Theo to gain access? The story shows he sees in him the potential to understand Ethan’s viewpoint.

The two meet in privacy now. Ethan describes his time in Africa, and the film visualizes his experiences there. It is vast, beautiful, and removed from human civilization. By increments he became closer to the silverback leader of the gorilla family. He says the clicking sound of his camera disturbed the gorilla. Once he abandoned the piece of technology, he says he “really” saw animals as Ethan became more one with nature. He felt he was getting in touch with something lost long ago and was now remembering. It became harder to leave them and eventually did not go back to his camp. He was able to touch them. He says to Theo that there was more danger in a city than in those forests.

After Ethan has spoken, he tells Ethan that the use of the cards to determine which inmate goes outside is the facility’s way of controlling the patients. He calls the institution’s operatives “takers,” because they remove the freedom of others. When Theo tries to say the session isn’t over, Ethan calls him a “taker.” Theo says he’s “free to go.” Ethan’s response is “Am I? Are you free?” Ethan is just going from one cell to another and implies that although not incarcerated, Theo is imprisoned by the expectations of society.

Ethan is right about the cards. The guards allow the survival of the fittest in an animal-like controlled environment by permitting the strongest, Bluto (Paul Bates), to get the Ace of Diamonds from others to get the privilege to go outside. The supposed civilized are not acting like their name when they allow people to be most primal. When Ethan gets the ace and Bluto attacks him, Ethan overpowers the man and the others back him up so that democratic humanity finds a way into this prison. Dr. John Murray (George Dzundza) says to Theo that even though every inmate is supposed to have a daily period outside they do not have the manpower to supervise many at once, so they let the cards act as a random way of allowing outside privileges. Theo says that the strongest have the advantage and Murray says that it causes the patients to focus their aggression on each other and not the guards. This system shows the awful way the civilized world treats its outsiders.

Murray says that it was worse before he got there although one would not want to think about how that could be. When the inmates fight each other, Dacks (John Ashton) lets them go at each other saying they work it out among themselves. The film suggests that gorillas in the jungle treat each other better than humans behave with their own kind. There is a self-destructive patient who likes to bang his head against the wall. Instead of trying to help him they gave the man a football helmet instead. That doesn’t stop the man from hurting himself. Theo isn’t prepared to deal with this type of chaos. We see Ethan perched high above near a window edge, like an animal in a tree observing all this craziness of the people below and is probably feeling justified in abandoning the human community for the gorilla one,

Ethan corrects Theo, saying that he did not live as an animal but as a human among animals, the way it was long ago before people became “takers,” trying to control everything, destroying the harmony (that word again) in the environment. The gorillas reached over that “line,” a metaphorical one unlike the one on the table before, to accept a human into their family, something humans can’t seem to do with their own kind.

Ethan will not talk about his wife and daughter, knowing that he left them behind and doesn’t want to be reminded of that. He knew humans were there even in the jungle because he saw trapped animals, because snaring is what people do, limiting the freedom of other life forms. He left behind his machete, his binoculars, things that connected him to modern times. He wants Theo to tell his story, to share what he learned, which he can’t do because he is no longer part of the current world inhabited by people. Theo is supposed to direct the flow of the treatment. He keeps pushing for Ethan to deal with his daughter, saying he is in control here. Ethan manhandles him and takes tape from his armrest and gags Theo. He threatens to kill him unless he learns the lesson that Ethan is teaching. After two failed attempts Theo gives the right answer, that Ethan has taken away Theo’s illusions that the psychiatrist has control over his life when he is really adhering to the routines prescribed for him.

When he sees Ethan again, he has drawn a map of the world on his cell walls as it was, he says, millions of years ago. Hunters and gatherers then only killed what they needed, only planted what they required. They were “part of the world” and “they shared” what they had. Theo asks are people supposed to give up the cities and go back to the jungle? Ethan says, “We have only one thing to give up. Our dominion. We don't own the world. We're not kings yet. Not gods. Can we give that up? Too precious, all that control? Too tempting, being a god?” Ethan is asking for a different way of looking at the Earth, and the part people play in it.

Theo brings a box with every patient’s name in it into the gymnasium where they gather. He says there will be no more cards, no ace, no fights. Each day a different name will be drawn so each man can have a chance of going outside. It is a random selection that is fair to all and denies Dacks control over the fates of others. When Dacks tries to intimidate Ethan, he rips his card and all the others do the same. Theo has learned Ethan’s lesson about giving up “dominion.”

Warden Keefer (John Ayleward) is not happy with Theo changing the rules. He says that Theo doesn’t have the authority to alter the program. It doesn’t matter that the rules were harmful and unfair, and That Theo used a better system to decide outside privileges. Dacks said that Ethan was threatening, but he wasn’t. To Dr. Murray’s credit, he backs up Theo by saying that Ethan was not violent. Murray is generous enough to see that Theo made a breakthrough. But all Keefer wants is to keep his “dominion, his “control.” (The name Keefer has the sound “key” at the beginning, which suggests he likes to determine who gets freedom and who he locks up).

Keefer exerts his power to limit how long Theo can stay at his institution. Theo has a week, and Hillard says he must find out why Ethan used violence, and if possible, why he no longer will be violent. A tall order. Ethan admitted to Theo that he murdered the men, but adds that there were many murders, which is what Theo must investigate.

Theo decides to reach Ethan by taking him to a zoo to visit the gorillas. In the past, Theo brought back a silverback, and he considers that action a betrayal on his part. Ethan says that the animals are “shadows of gorillas, born in cages.” They do not know their true selves because, like the slaves brought to America, the owners cut them off from their true identities. The silverback is named Goliath, a name suggesting power, but Theo says the animal has been broken and is now insane. He admits his part in that atrocity.

Ethan says that there was a female gorilla who took good care of her child. She allowed Ethan to hold the baby. This flashback stresses how Ethan did not show much affection toward his daughter. The silverback in the wild took care of them all, him included. The silverback showed “tolerance, acceptance,” attributes we admire when people show them.

We finally view through Ethan’s retelling the “many murders” that took place. Men came and shot the gorillas. Ethan hid the baby and then tried to defend the others by using a wooden club, killing and harming the men. There were too many “takers,” and they wounded him in the leg and overpowered him. When the silverback charged, trying to help Ethan, they shot the gorilla in his tracks. The men had Ethan’s machete and binoculars. They tracked him. Ethan feels profound guilt for his part in what happened. Theo correctly says that Ethan was only protecting his new “family.” He takes a pen from Theo and opens the cage, but Goliath will not try to escape. He says that the gorilla could get freedom over the fence, but the idea of escaping is now only something he dreamed of, something not real. That statement is a foreshadowing of what is to come.

Theo believes he can have a hearing and get Ethan free. Lynn is there and Theo says he will not tell her “Goodbye” for Ethan; he must do it himself. Theo keeps pushing Ethan to show the same attention to his true child as he did for the baby gorilla. He meets Lynn and tells her if he had the chance now and she was a baby he would keep her close and never leave her. The only possession he kept with him was a photo of her when she was a child. They move that photo back and forth over the line on the table, showing defiance of the overly restrictive controls.

Those in authority can’t let go of their power, however. Dacks brings Ethan back to his cell that has been wiped clean of his drawing of the ancient world, metaphorically removing the cooperation of the ancient world species. The guard starts to hit him with the nightstick when Ethan hesitates to go back into the cell. The other inmates apologize to Ethan about his cell and Dacks starts to attack another inmate. Ethan has a new family among these misfits. So, he attacks Dacks. Even Bluto helps hold the guard against his cell.

The problem now is that Ethan has shown violence again and has now reverted to his anti-social ways by reverting to his mute state. To show how much Ethan has affected Theo, the psychiatrist, in response to Hillard’s comment how Theo may be losing control, says, “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

In the gymnasium, up near the window where he stares out at freedom, Ethan sways like a restless animal. Theo talks to him, and it appears that Ethan is closed off, not paying attention to him. Theo says he was good at playing the “game,” of playing by the rules. But he wasn’t close to anybody. He says that Ethan showed him how to live outside the game, to truly live. But, because of the way things are, he will go back to the “game,” but wishes he didn’t have to say goodbye to the one who showed him a different way to be.

As Theo leaves, Ethan turns sideways, showing he paid attention to Theo. In his hand is the pen he took to open Goliath’s cage. He has been using it to scrape away at the hinge that holds the window. One may think of The Shawshank Redemption, and Andy’s small hammer.

The next scene has the guards, Dr. Murray and the patients watching a baseball game. Pete (Thoams Q. Morris) pulls the electric plug so they can’t watch the TV. Murray uses gentle persuasion, that he learned from Theo, to get the electric cord back, saying it’s a guard’s birthday, and Pete should give him the cord as a present. It’s all a diversion. In the commotion, Ethan escapes.

Ethan left a message for Theo. It says that he thanks Theo for going on the journey with him and getting him his daughter back. He says, “You were right. Freedom is not just a dream. It's there, on the other side of those fences we build all by ourselves.” He’s saying we imprison ourselves if we allow it. Later in the rain, Theo stops covering himself, just as Ethan did earlier in the wilderness. Theo spreads his arms and looks up at the sky, another similarity to Andy gaining freedom from the prison in Shawshank.

The last shot is Ethan heading back to the jungle. Another one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.