He plays and chatters like a chimp, but, like a child, he needs protection and reassurance, and then—a fellow-primate to the rescue—he rushes to the defense of Charles, his ailing “grandfather,” when he’s attacked by a neighbor. An empathic ape! The screenwriters, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, and the director, Rupert Wyatt, create many small gestures, glances, and pauses that anchor the improbable turns of the story.At one point, Charles, confused, holds a fork by the wrong end, and Caesar slowly, gently takes it out of his hand and turns it around. The scene is ineffably, absurdly touching, the sweetest expression of family love seen in recent films.Pierre Boulle’s novel was sardonic, even maliciously satirical—science fiction with a tickle. But “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” discovers a new emotion: what you’d have to call interspecies pathos.

Andy Serkis, who was the emaciated, depraved, ground-hugging Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, plays Caesar—that is, he lends his body and face, covered with reflective markers, to image-makers who then, employing the techniques of motion capture, create a digitized simulacrum of an ape, but an ape that has unrivalled flexibility and expressiveness. The filmmakers have pulled off a stunning paradox: Caesar is much more human than an entirely digitized creation, and much more apish than an actual ape—faster, stronger, more exuberant in his knuckle-dragging, chin-thrusting, lunging glory. Caesar becomes an adolescent; hormones kick in, and he turns violent, doing bongo numbers on his enemies with his fists. At last, digital fantasy means something: we are not watching a dull-brained superhero banging off walls like a fly in a bottle; we are watching an animal with suddenly enhanced powers who still behaves recognizably like an animal. But a juiced-up ape can become something more than fun for us—he can shock us with his power, even inspire terror.There’s a premonition early in the film: when a leashed German shepherd barks at Caesar, he roars back at the dog, and then, climbing into Will’s car, surly and sad, he signs with his hands that he feels like a pet—it’s a complaint, a question, and a challenge.

A second fable moves into place. The violent Caesar gets sent to an ape compound, where he’s forced through steel mazes, prodded, and stun-gunned. The imprisonment is unbearable: he experiences the humiliation that a mere dumb animal would never feel.Gorillas, orangutans, and other chimps live with him in the compound, and Caesar quickly becomes a leader of apes. For a while, the movie turns into the latest version of “Escape from Alcatraz,” reaching its climax in a single syllable, a roaring “No!”—Caesar’s first word, a refusal that caused the audience when I saw the movie to go ape.