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Das Experiment

2002, Movie, NR, 113 mins

Das Experiment: Review

DAS EXPERIMENT
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A role-playing exercise goes terribly wrong in this German film about power, corruption and the beast within. Though based on the novel Black Box, its real inspiration can only be Professor Philip Zimbardo's notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which college students assigned to play prisoners and guards in a make-believe penitentiary behaved so badly the project was suspended after six days. Journalist-turned-discontented taxi driver Tarek Fahd (Moritz Bleibtreu) senses a career-rejuvenating story in a newspaper ad. A respectable research facility is seeking subjects for a two-week prison simulation; the pay is generous and the situation will be tightly supervised. Tarek talks his way through the screening process, concealing his claustrophobia to make sure he's accepted, then pitches the scoop to his old editor (Andre Jung). He gets the assignment, though it's clear the pugnacious Tarek left his old profession under a cloud, perhaps in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Equipped with a pair of eyeglasses concealing a tiny camcorder, Tarek joins 19 other recruits, who are randomly divided into two groups — eight guards in sharp uniforms, 12 prisoners in loose-fitting shifts. Tarek is a prisoner. The rules are simple: Prisoners must obey the mock prison's many petty and arbitrary regulations, guards must enforce order. Violence will not be tolerated, head researcher Professor Thon (Edgar Selge), emphasizes; violators will be ejected, unpaid, from the experiment. And so the role-playing begins. Tarek is hell-bent on stirring things up; not only is he a troublemaker by nature (what a guard he would have made), but controversy will improve his story. In the end, though, his provocations are unnecessary. Within 36 hours the "prisoners" have become defiant and insolent, goading the keepers they know are enjoined from retaliating. The "guards" — a cross-section of hardworking, law-abiding husbands and fathers — are using cruel humiliation to enforce their authority and, since the film is German, the word "Nazi" — though uttered only once — hangs heavily over the proceedings. First-time feature filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel maintains a riveting sense of simmering brutality, though the lyrical interludes involving Dora (Maren Eggert), a dazed young woman Tarek meets the night before the experiment starts, are less certainly handled. Though they provide welcome respite from the pressure-cooker prison sequences, they seem better suited to a more fanciful film; in fact, they strongly recall the quiet interstitial scenes in RUN LOLA RUN (1998), in wjich Bleibtreu co-starred. LOLA's atmosphere of magical realism meshes better with suggestions of eternal love at first sight and psychic bonds between lovers. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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