B+ for psychology 101

The Stanford Prison Experiments of 1971 provide a pretty compelling basis for this fictionalized reconstruction. All the more so because this exploration of the effects of power and authority upon the actions of everyday men was created in a Germany acutely aware of the implication of these themes for the understanding of its own past.

Many of the characters from Das Experiment are closely based upon their Stanford archetypes, and the plot recalls many of the key events of the original experiment. The narrative is broken up by the addition of a bizarre love story, and brought to an artificially neat conclusion, but the world of the film is recognizably that of the original experiment.

A more serious weakness though, is the emotional focus of the movie. The most important implications of the original experiment focused upon the dehumanizing effects of authority upon the guards who wielded it, as well as upon the rapid submission of the prisoners to this arbitrary power. By making the focus of their movie a prisoner, the filmmakers seem to have missed a trick.

We empathise with prisoner 77, and fume against the injustices that the guards mete out, but a more provocative approach would have been to follow this sympathetic character as he became de-humanized by the role into which he was thrust. Instead, we leave feeling that all airline workers are crypto-fascists, and all Elvis impersonators shouldn’t be trusted – valuable life-lessons, to be sure, but disappointing from a premise that promised rather more.