We open in the world as we know it, humans in charge and apes in cages. An experimental Alzheimer’s drug bestows upon Caesar, born in captivity, a burgeoning intelligence. Taken home as a pet, familiar, and friend of scientist Will (James Franco), he is granted an upstairs room, a limited freedom and respect, and play dates in the manicured wilds of Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Nonetheless, he ends up in a correctional facility for simians, where he is ill-used. Caesar pines for his charming San Francisco attic with its church window.

Via bribery and promises to preserve the order of things, Will eventually wins Caesar’s freedom. Will is coded in every regard as the good guy, in comparison both to his avaricious corporate boss and the brutal preserve master, played by Brian Cox, with his yellowed veneer of humanity. Will loves Caesar. Surely this is the moment—an hour in, already!—when good joins with good and the malefactors are given what for, in a rousing finale.

This is precisely what does not happen. His cage thrown open, Caesar spots the leash in Will’s hand and, seeming to reach out to him, he instead closes the door, locking himself in. No pretending that even the most enlightened bondage is more tolerable than an iron cage.

It is a heartbreaking moment: the sorrow of serious politics. To understand the real situation is to understand that the categories of good and evil, of humane and inhumane, of compassionate and cruel—the humanist bedtime tales—do not apply. There is an irreducible antagonism between one group and another, and no amount of moral or ethical grace can remedy it. Love cannot help with it. Working to change things from within cannot help with it. There is no yes that doesn’t come with a leash.