The Girl In Red

Who is the little girl? Why does she stay with apes? Why are we introduced to something so pure in the midst of war?

I wondered with such questions while watching War for the Planet of the Apes. There is one particular scene in the movie where Caesar hallucinates about Koba followed by the scene where the girl helps him out. The girl is infected with virus and yet her soul is noble and pure.The irony of the conflict amazed me. Caesar kills Winter breaking their conduct yet, the group feels no remorse.

In the process of fighting humans, somewhere down the line the apes lose it like the humans lost it. The girl symbolizes the lost innocence that apes once had and her character shows what it means to be an ape. The symbolic nature of the girl’s identity sums up the whole movie.

The Colonel has a problem with Caesar being emotional. The Colonel thinks he is fighting for the humans but he is already infected, not with the virus but with his lack of empathy for his fellow race. Surprisingly, it is the little girl’s doll because of which he will be infected in the end. Was he infected or cured? Think. Caesar bombs out every one from the colonel’s camp but dies in the end proving that he has gone too far to a place from which he can never come back. However, the girl stays. The girl always stays.

War for the planet of the apes is one of the good complex philosophical blockbuster films I had seen in recent times.

Ps: Nova is a latin word which means ‘New’.