LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
7. The Experiment (2010), a remake of German "Das Experiment" (2001),
based on "Black Box" (1999) by Mario Giordano.
I have not read the book, so I'll compare two films and original events.
First, both films and a book are based loosely on real facts, namely on infamous Stanford prison experiment conducted in 1971, and partially on the results of Milgram experiment on social psychology.
The main idea of the original film as I see it was that deep down most people are conformists. They are a part of a herd, they tend to assume roles that are assigned to them, which was effectively proved in the experiments, mentioned above.
Most people rely on society, authority figures, religion or public opinion to make hard moral choices and to correct their behaviour. But what happens if an unthinkable thing is declared to be normal? If you are asked to do it? And if those who are supposed to know better tell you that it's a good thing to do? What if you are still not fully convinced, but you can see that people around you, good normal people do it? And they are encouraged instead of being punished? What's right and what's wrong, then?
These are everyday questions, and we make these kind of decisions daily, even if consequences of our decisions are not so dire as in that film.
Das Experiment (2001)
The Experiment (2010)
American remake's message differs. It's mostly dumbed down to "People are aggressive animals", and survival of the fittest. To bring the idea home we are shown videos of fighting people and various animal predators hunting their prey.
The whole idea of Milgram and Stanford experiments is turned upside down. They were designed to explore behaviour of moral, mentally stable, boring people who are facing a moral dilemma. The more horrifying were the results. In "The Experiment" we have a set of jumpy and emotionally unbalanced folks, who should not have been chosen for this experiment in the first place. Both main characters (played by Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker) looked like they were going to go postal any minute.
In German film chief "warden" is rather collected and very serious about his job. Some of the concentration camps officials must have been like him - bland, responsible, maybe even quitely proud of their job. Whitaker plays a twitching, mentally unstable and desperate guy, and in case we missed that a few characters kindly tell him "OMG, You are a psycho"(really? thanks for explaining obvious things again and again).
Remake decided to ignore completely people "behind the glass" and their motivations. We don't know why they arranged such an experiment or why they let things go out of control. It seems that their purpose was simply to enjoy the show. In the original film, which rather closely follows real events, organisators are serious scientists, who got affected by their own experiment and almost lost their objectivity.
Das Experiment (2001)
Despite of everything said above I won't go as far as to call "The Experiment" (2010) a bad film. It's good, better than many others. I'll probably give it 7 out of 10. But watch "Das Experiment" (2001) instead, if you can, it's even better, and explore human nature more deeply.
***
Additional link: The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment (Official site on the experiment by Dr.Zimbardo with detailed explanations and pictures)
Reply With Quote
