In her last on-camera interview, English primatologist Jane Goodall used her platform to uplift others. In a direct address to an unknown audience, she says, “Your life matters, and you are here for a reason. And I just hope that reason will become apparent as you live through your life.” 

Growing up in a family with two parents who studied anthropology and archaeology, one of whom taught a physical anthropology course at the local community college, some of the earliest people I thought of as celebrities were palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leakey, as well as his protégés Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. These two women challenged the way we think about primates as social beings who live in communities not all that dissimilar to our own. They showed me, and other girls like me, a path towards living life with passion and dedicating oneself to something greater than oneself.

Fossey had her short but impactful life memorialized by the 1988 film “Gorillas In The Mist,” featuring an Oscar-nominated Sigourney Weaver as the primatologist who was murdered by poachers at the age of 53. Jane Goodall was much luckier with her work, spanning nearly six decades. By the time she passed away on October 1st at the age of 91, Goodall had authored thirty-two books, fifteen of which were specifically written for children, and had been featured in over forty documentary films. 

Born in 1934 in Hampstead, London, Goodall became interested in animals after her father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee, which she named Jubilee, rather than a traditional teddy bear. This fascination led her to the White Highlands in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya in 1957. A life-changing meeting with Leakey led to several opportunities for her to study primate behavior and primate anatomy with experts Osman Hill and John Napier, and later to earn a PhD in Ethology from the University of Cambridge. Leakey’s thought was that if they could learn more about the behavior of existing great apes, this would help his work, which sought to understand the behavior of early hominids.

Goodall has said her mother’s encouragement gave her strength as she began her research career in this intensely male-dominated field. Goodall’s trailblazing work, along with her ongoing advocacy for more young women to join the field, has been cited as a factor in the equalization of men and women working in primatology today. 

In her 1999 book “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey,” Goodall recalled that while observing chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in the 1960s, she initially thought that they were “nicer than human beings,” but later she found, “that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature.” This, along with her discovery that chimpanzees can make tools, helped redefine everything we thought we knew about both early humans and our primate cousins. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 with the aim of continuing her research, as well as facilitating legal frameworks to protect wildlife habitats. 

Goodall and her work have been the subject of numerous documentaries over the years. Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman’s 1990 short documentary, “Chimps: So Like Us,” features interviews with Goodall as she describes how each chimp has its own unique voice, just like humans do, intercut with footage of chimps in the wild living their lives. That same year, Judith Dwan Hallet’s “In The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall” similarly follows Goodall as she does her job in the wild, observing the animals while teaching what she’s learned to others. In this film, Goodall shares with the audience her feelings about her favorite family of chimps, whom she affectionately calls the “F” troop.

While these early films align with Goodall’s goal of sharing her singular knowledge with the world as a form of preservation and activism, later films about Goodall take a more hagiographic approach, aiming instead to position her into an icon status. However, one recent film stands high above the pack: Brett Morgen’s impressionistic 2017 documentary “Jane,” which features astonishing never-before-seen footage of Goodall’s field work, shot mainly on lush 16mm color film stock by filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, who would later become Goodall’s first husband, that had been hidden away in the National Geographic archives until its discovery in 2014. Morgen’s kaleidoscopic editing style, Philip Glass’s impassioned score, and the love between Lawick and Goodall that shines through his breathtaking footage form a rich portrait of both the trailblazing woman and the sacrifices she made to protect that natural world that had so beguiled her. 

In March of this year, Goodall was interviewed by filmmaker Brad Falchuk for a Netflix series called “Famous Last Words,” intended to be released only after her death. The hour-long special features a candid fifty-minute conversation between Goodall and Falchuk. The two then share a shot of whisky, Falchuk leaves the sound stage, and Goodall faces the camera, addressing the world for one last time. Goodall’s goodbye to people of the world lasts a full five minutes. Her speech ends with an urgent clarion call about the impact of man-made climate change, reminding us that, “as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we have to do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those that will follow.”

Goodall lived her life with a purpose, not just rooted in her work with chimpanzees, but also in her mission to conserve our natural world before it’s too late. As I read more and more headlines about the destruction of the world’s oceans, the depletion of resources for A.I. data centers, and the environmental impact of war, I truly hope her life wasn’t lived in vain after all. 

When we look back at John Cusack’s expressive and bruised-heart romantic Rob Gordon in “High Fidelity” a quarter-century after the film’s release, there’s little doubt Rob was often a petulant and immature narcissist who filtered nearly every life experience only through what it meant to him. At times, it seemed like it would shock Rob to learn his actions and words have consequences—that he’s responsible for the state of his own life.

There are moments when we’re stunned, even nauseated, by Rob’s self-absorbed reaction to revelations from former girlfriends, e.g., Joelle Carter’s Penny setting him straight about the trauma she experienced after their breakup—and Rob making her pain all about him. What makes “High Fidelity” an enduring Chicago classic despite—what makes it still poignant, funny, and insightful—is that the Stephen Frears-directed adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel frequently acknowledges Rob’s flaws. Cusack imbues him with a raw vulnerability, a spark of humanity, and just enough growth to make him move the needle toward Rob being likable. Somewhere just north of the age of 30, surrounding himself in protective layers of vinyl- and cassette-based hipsterism, he’s at least trying to embark on a journey of self-discovery. By the time Rob bids farewell to us as Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” swells into the closing credits, we hope for the best for Rob.

Even if we doubt his on-and-off relationship with Iben Hjelje’s Laura will last.

Like Hornby’s memoir Fever Pitch, “High Fidelity” was thoroughly British in its sensibilities, but Frears and the screenwriting team (which included Cusack) did a spectacular job of retaining the spirit of the book while shifting the locale to Chicago. (The 2005 Americanized version of “Fever Pitch,” switching the sport from soccer to baseball and starring current talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, almost sounds like parody—but it actually kinda works.) Hornby’s novel was adapted into a short-lived Broadway musical in 2006, with not-quite-immortal songs such as “The Last Real Record Store” and “Number Five with a Bullet,” and updated for a Brooklyn-set, gender-switching Hulu series in 2020—but the 2000 feature film remains the definitive adaptation.

Rewatching “High Fidelity,” one is struck by how well it serves as a time capsule of turn-of-the-millennium Chicago, primarily the Wicker Park neighborhood in all its bohemian, alt-rock, thrift-store, shabby-cool glory. Even when the locations expand to Lakeview, Lincoln Park and River North, every frame of “High Fidelity” feels true to the time. We believe these characters live in these spaces. We marvel at Chicago touchstones (some still here, some gone), including the Double Door, the Green Mill Lounge, the Music Box Theatre, Hi Ricky Asia Noodle Shop & Satay Bar, and Lounge Ax. The Irish cinematographer Seamus McGarvey would go on to deliver gorgeous and sometimes breathtaking visuals in the Joe Wright films “Atonement” and “Anna Karenina,” not to mention “The Avengers,” but his work here is equally impressive, in a lower key. The Chicago we see here is gritty, lived-in, real. “High Fidelity” occupies the same universe as the likes of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but the images are worlds away.

Walking out of the Biograph Theater,  Cusack as Rob tells us, “John Dillinger was shot dead behind that theater in a hail of gunfire. Do you know who tipped them off? His f***** girlfriend.” That’s dark. And funny. Cusack is effortlessly natural in breaking the fourth wall;  he has nearly as many lines with “us” as he does with any in-movie character. Rob wears his psyche on his sleeve, whether he’s musing about why he is the way he is—“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”—or admitting he was in over his head with the beautiful and worldly Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones): “I never got comfortable. Why would a woman like Charlie go out with me?” It’s well-calibrated work encased within shambling physicality.

In an underrated performance, Iben Hjelje shines as Laura, a corporate attorney who has outgrown her pink-hair days and has seemingly outgrown Rob, but has her own undercurrent of instability. After Laura leaves Rob, Rob launches into his “desert island, all-time, top five, most memorable breakups, in chronological order,” and sets out to revisit each of those women from his past. Throughout that trip, “High Fidelity” reminds us of the last generation before smartphones and social media, a time of landlines and answering machines, phone books and indoor smoking, mix tapes, and desperate calls from rain-soaked telephone kiosks. (Rob is forever getting caught in deluges. You’d think Chicago was in Colombia or Papua New Guinea.)

Rob’s record store employees and friends, the manic Barry (an electric Jack Black) and the painfully shy Dick (Todd Louiso, expertly playing kindest soul in Rob’s world) provide a kind of Geek Greek chorus to Rob’s emotional rollercoaster ride; Championship Vinyl is one of the few places in the world where these two misfits can be pop culture bullies, or at least feel like they belong. Meanwhile, Cusack creates one of his most memorable romantic and intense and often obsessive characters, alongside the boombox-toting Lloyd Dobler in 1989’s “Say Anything.” (Martin in “Grosse Point Blank,” Jonathan in “Serendipity” and Jake in “Must Love Dogs” could round out a “Top Five List of John Cusack Borderline Stalker Roles.”) It’s no small feat for Cusack to draw us into so many characters that might be more abrasive than endearing were it not for his inherent, regular-guy likability.

Of course, the songs are a huge component of the story; this is about as close as a movie can get to being a musical without actually being one, with needle drops ranging from “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by 13th Floor Elevators to “Robbin’s Nest” by Illinois Jacquet to Barry White’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Babe,” plus Bruce Springsteen’s cameo and Jack Black’s star-making rendition of “Let’s Get It On.”

On my recent revisit, I also got a kick out of the familial bonds prevalent in the casting—including one that wouldn’t manifest until two decades later. John’s sister, Joan Cusack, is a burst of comedic energy as Rob’s (rightfully) judgmental sister, Liz. Their father, Dick Cusack, is the minister at Laura’s father’s funeral. John and Joan’s sister Susie Cusack appears as a guest at Charlie’s dinner party. (Ugh, that whole bunch is INSUFFERABLE.) Margaret Travolta, sister of John, plays Rob’s mother. Natasha Gregson Wagner (daughter of producer Richard Gregson and Natalie Wood and stepdaughter of Robert Wagner) plays the beguiling music columnist Caroline Forts, who briefly captures Rob’s interests. Lisa Bonet is a casual scene-stealer as the sultry singer Marie De Salle, who has a brief tryst with Rob but sees right through him. (Twenty years later, Bonet’s daughter Zoë Kravitz would play Crown Heights record store owner Robyn “Rob” Brooks in the Hulu series.)

A 2010 article in Chicago magazine placed “High Fidelity” atop its list of the best Chicago movies of all time. I’m not quite there. With contenders such as “Mickey One,” “Cooley High,” “Thief,” “Risky Business,” “The Untouchables,” “The Blues Brothers,” “The Fugitive,” “Barbershop,” and “The Dark Knight.” I wouldn’t put it in my personal Top 5—but if we expand that list to 10 or 12, “High Fidelity” definitely charts.