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Some reservations, but interesting..., 9 mars 2006
Oliver Hirschbiegel's film 'Das Experiment' is loosely inspired by the famous (infamous?) Stanford Experiment of 30 years ago. In that experiment, students at the university were housed for a few weeks in a make-shift prison, to see what happens to the mentality of the inmates and guards as they adjust to their new roles. The experiment itself had many flaws, and is hardly representative of prison life in general (or boot camps, or other such environments), but did serve to highlight some of the problems that are possible, and argues for some of the safeguards that are necessary.
Hirschbiegel's film departs from that experiment in key ways, but perhaps the primary way is by having an undercover journalist Tarek/Prisoner 77 (played by Moritz Bleibtreu) purposely trying to instigate problems to enable his story to have more substance. The primary protagonist to Tarek is the guard Berus (played by Justus von Dohnanyi), whose oppressive nature takes over.
The last half of this film is very violent, far more so than the Stanford Experiment ever became. The cinematography is a bit lacking - perhaps the German art-house intention was to make this a mock-documentary, at least at first, to draw the audience in before letting the situation get out of control, and by then it is too late (for the audience and for the characters). One does have to have a willing suspension of disbelief here, as the allowance for violence becomes almost a parody (after all, this is supposed to be a in Germany sensitive to post-Holocaust issues such as letting guards have free and absolute reign over the subjects) - but perhaps that was part of the intention of Hirschbiegel, to let it serve as a reminder about how easily humanity can slip back into such roles.
The film suffers from lack of character development, as the plot and substance of the film is event-driven rather than personality driven; the undercurrents are lacking, and occasional subplots are introduced that do not really help the film along. Some judicious editing and perhaps a few character development scenes, at least of the major characters, would be helpful in getting the audience to understanding the underlying motivations. Again, perhaps the intention of Hirschbiegel was to argue that this could happen to any group of men, regardless of background or personality, but that is a bit lost here.
Overall, I tentatively recommend this film, but give strong warning for both the psychological and physical violence portrayed as sometimes being beyond the necessary.
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