“Our artificial insemination will go as planned and we'll let nature take its course,” declares a scientist at the Yerkes primate research center in Atlanta, apparently oblivious to the contradiction in his statement. Primate is an alarming, absurdist critique of the notion of scientific observation—the more discomfiting in that we as viewers are implicated, watching the people who watch the primates. Without narration to explain and soothe, we are left to puzzle over the meaning of experiments that involve masturbating orangutans and assessing which electrical frequencies produce the best monkey erections. Responding to the public outrage sparked by the film's harrowing images, the research center's director denounced Primate as “a perversion,” a fitting choice of words given the clinical prurience of many of the experiments. Although the film raises serious questions, after you've heard a lab worker address her caged charges as “mama's babies,” you might agree with Wiseman that “it's actually a rather bizarre comedy.”
—Juliet Clark