MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | YOUTUBE |  NEWS |  EDITORIALS | EVENTS | AUDIO | ESSAYS | ARCHIVES | CONTACT |
 PHOTOS | COMING SOON| EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES ||HOME

                                                          
Friday, July 24, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW The Stanford Prison Experiment
The State Of The State Of Authority, California, 1971


Ezra Miller, center left, faces off against the bearded Michael Angarano, center right, in Kyle Patrick Alvarez's drama "The Stanford Prison Experiment".  IFC Films
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        FOLLOW                                            TWEET
Friday, July 24, 2015

No one wants to be a guard at the start of “The Stanford Prison Experiment” but very soon some of these able-bodied citizens will fall right in line.  “The Stanford Prison Experiment” left me less disturbed than nonplussed, undercutting its potency.  The August 1971 Stanford University experiment on authority, abuse and submission with 23 white male students and one Asian male student in Palo Alto, California, was to last two weeks. 

But the “prisoners” extreme distress and trauma — and researcher Christine Maslach’s admonitions to now spouse then-boyfriend and Stanford study creator Dr. Philip Zimbardo to stop — ended the experiments after six days.  Those admonitions aren’t clearly revealed and are only barely implied, which does the viewer, and more importantly Professor Maslach, a disservice.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s drama is a mildly disturbing account of how authority is readily acceded to among many personalities, including those otherwise meek and mild.  Some of the test cases — all of whom are promised $15 a day, quickly buckle under timeless conditions of no sunlight or windows.  Others are defiant.  This tension and combustion defines the discomfiting atmosphere and razor's edge upon which “Stanford” is dispassionately and devastatingly perched.  

Yet Mr. Alvarez’s film sabotages that effectiveness with a needless epilogue of interviews that explain and interpret what we’ve just seen.  The epilogue made me feel the director sometimes didn’t trust enough in the intelligence of his audience.  I wasn't made uncomfortable enough.  And the neat bow that tries to wrap things up pulled my admiration of “Stanford” down several pegs.

Granted, the film’s quiet power is undeniable, and Billy Crudup, who plays Mr. Zimbardo, a man who was a tad unhinged at the time, is utterly magnetic and arresting to watch.  The film’s contours, with its tight shots, close-ups and TV screen views, propel us into the labyrinthine constraints of the mock prison, held in a Stanford hallway during a summer on a barren campus. 

Memorably, “Stanford’s” strength is in the experiment that infects and affects not the prisoners (Stanley Milgram’s 1960s Yale experiments revealed similar findings) but administrators like Dr. Zimbardo who ran it.  The experiment works on him, too, unearthing the unregulated appetites that too much authority — or an absence of it — does.  The “on” switch stays on.  Dr. Zimbardo indulges his basest desires.  The film’s lone Black character (Nelsan Ellis), a former San Quentin prisoner, is deeply troubled by how easily he himself slips into authoritarian mode during a parole hearing.  It’s too much for him to bear.

After seeing “The Stanford Prison Experiment”, a bland title but one that’s necessarily minimalist, I thought of “Compliance”, a stronger and intensely unsettling film predicated on very real and similarly-themed bows to authority.  There’s also “Experiment” (about Mr. Milgram), among other films.

As I watched “Stanford” I thought of Sandra Bland, Kalief Browder, the Central Park Five, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay.  All of these abusive horrors and a million others — when cast in the primal deep of human beings and within a fiercely authoritarian culture in the U.S. — are inextricably linked.  With their badges and guns police inherently compel obedience.  Without regulation and with institutional backing in a system that lacks accountability and doesn't confer any upon them, brutal and crooked police continue to run amok.  So-called good police remain silent, blue wall or no blue wall.  Similarly, regular civilians do too.  (I explain this in great detail here.)

In some ways, and not only due to these troubling times but because this film should have been far more powerful and incisive, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” felt distant: old and stale, compromised by safety (thanks to the profligate epilogue), and, unlike the aforementioned “Compliance”, not confrontational or provoking enough.

For me Mr. Alvarez’s film is softened by history, indeed all of human history.  What’s so remarkable and noteworthy, I thought, about a film predicated upon an experiment that shows us the uglier depths of human souls?  After all, human history and daily practice shows that a sizable number of us haven’t learned to regulate our worst selves.  We override ourselves to seek control over our environment and even in the most innocuous interactions, seek control over others.  We inevitably try to survive, and we exhale that amazingly we made it through another day without getting killing or being killed.  (Some of us do, anyway.) 

After all, we each have the capacity to do unspeakable things.  Only our consciences can put up a huge red light.  If all the wars around the globe and killings over centuries haven’t convinced us of that, then why should “The Stanford Prison Experiment”?

One other interesting question: what if Dr. Zimbardo had assembled 24 women for his experiment?  Or 24 Black men?  Would the results be the same?  Most likely.  Would the experiment have ended earlier or later?

The experiment as depicted in Mr. Alvarez's contained film extends to the reinforcement of gender roles in a sexist society.  One telling scene features the mother of one participant who is clearly concerned for her son's welfare.  Dr. Zimbardo brushes off her concerns by challenging the masculinity of her husband with a male solidarity exercise that makes the husband patronize his own spouse and relegate his son's agency and safety in front of Dr. Zimbardo at the same time.  The wife, clearly distressed, quietly departs, but not before correcting herself and calling Mr. Zimbardo "Doctor Zimbardo".  The white male power environment, not the experiment, is working her.  It's a subtle but incredibly telling moment.  

It's not just authority, but male authority -- white male authority -- that fuels the power dynamic and re-oppresses the women characters in the film, who have come from or are aware of an environment of women that have (presumably) been fighting for equal rights and autonomy (and burning bras) in 1971.  Ms. Maslach, who married Dr. Zimbardo in 1972, is treated in the film condescendingly by her husband-to-be.  Dr. Zimbardo is the literal and symbolic male power who continuously asserts himself.  His twitchy, ogre-like dominance however, is less far-reaching than he thinks it is.  All along he's being played, it appears, by his own experiment.  And I found that more interesting than almost everything else that transpires.

Note: Mr. Alvarez’s film is based on Dr. Zimbardo’s book “The Lucifer Effect”.  

Also with: Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, Jack Kilmer, Ki Hong Lee, Logan Miller, James Frecheville.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for language throughout, and some violence.  The film's running time is two hours and three minutes.

COPYRIGHT 2015.  POPCORNREEL.COM.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.                 FOLLOW

MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | YOUTUBE |  NEWS |  EDITORIALS | EVENTS | AUDIO | ESSAYS | ARCHIVES | CONTACT | PHOTOS | COMING SOON| EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES ||HOME