"Das Experiment" (the German film of the year for 2001, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel) is based on the prison/guard simulation experiment at Stanford directed by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 (for more information on it, see www.prisonexp.org). The Stanford students randomly assigned to the guard role turned so brutal so fast and the students randomly assigned to the prisoner role were showing such levels of stress and depression that the experiment was ended before reaching the half-way mark (six of the scheduled fourteen days). It resulted in no fatalities and no major injuries. And those with obvious psychopathologies were screened out.

Mario Giordano wrote a novel, The Black Box (and adapted it for the screen) imagining some psychologists repeating the experiment and pressing it on further. I don't find the spiral of psychopathology hard to credit, but I do find it hard to believe that social psychologists anywhere—and especially in Germany—would undertake the experiment. German scientists' experiments on concentration camp prisoners during the "thousand-year Reich" is too well-known to exacerbate the German image as sadists reveling in the torture of prisoners. Moreover, the adult recruits for the movie experiment are not randomly assigned. It is not the power that turns some of those playing guards into sadists (as happens readily enough). Those showing eagerness to torture and authoritarian personalities are selected for the guard role, and one likely troublemaker is planted amongst those playing prisoners.

As the movie begins, the participants of the psychological study view it as a lark and an easy way to pick up some cash (4000 marks, $1800±250, depending on when the film is set). The guys chosen to be the twelve guards say "cool," (with one smacking his lips and rubbing his hands at the prospect of having some people to dominate) when they see their uniforms. The eight losers in the phony drawing initially don't really mind being prisoners since the rules explicitly state that no violence will be permitted.

What is fascinating is how most of the members of both groups tend to follow charismatic leaders (this also can be written off as German authoritarian predispostions and socialization). None of the other guards is as sadistic as Berus (Justus von Dohnanyi) and none of the other prisoners is as rebellious as Tarek Fahd (Moritz Bleibtreu), who remembers, "My father would say, 'Don't do this,' and I'd do it."

There are a few strays. One prisoner seems custom-made to be a victim (Wotan Wilke Möhring), but another, a man with military experience (played by Oliver Stokowski), holds back and tries to analyze the situation and provide cool guidance. But he's more or less powerless because—well, the guards are in charge. One of the guards has misgivings about what is happening, but it takes a lot of nerve to defy the pack of oppressors or to challenge the dominant view. (Another famous social psychology experiment by Solomon Asch showed that it is exponentially more difficult for one person to challenge group consensus than it is with even one additional challenger.)

By the fifth day, things have gotten more out of hand than they were when the Stanford experiment was shut down, and one of the psychologists (played by Andrea Sawatzki) wants to shut it down (another demonstration of the difficulty of being a lone dissident overwhelmed by the tyranny of the majority...)

How effective the movie was, even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion, and how much of the swift downward trajectory into barbarism is expectable (not least from knowledge of the Zimbardo experiment), is surprising. The last half-hour involves many familiar thriller devices, but is also surprisingly absorbing.

Some time and momentum are lost with a subplot about a woman, Dora (Maren Eggert), whom Tarek just met before the experimental isolation began. He recalls their tryst often and she eventually has a role in the main plot.

The music by Alexander Bubenheim is effective thriller music. The prison set is very green (in the tradition of supersaturated-color new German cinema). Bleibtreu is excellent in a role differing markedly from the crook in "Run, Lola, Run" and the nerdy teacher in "In July" (somewhat closer to the translator he played in "Taking Sides." In that no one seems to perceive or to react to Tarek as being Turkish, I don't know why Bleibtreu's character was given a Turkish name. (At the start of the movie, he is a taxi driver, but the audience soon learns that he walked away from a job as a reporter, because he goes back to his former workplace to pre-sell an exposé by enrolling in the experiment undercover, like the reporter in "Shock Corridor"—and, like him, gets more than he bargained for and thought he could handle.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD