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Scott McCulloch Distribution Manager You are what you wear. First-time German film director Oliver Hirschbiegel might have constructed his engrossing, thoroughly gut-wrenching thriller, "Das Experiment" around this seemingly harmless platitude. "Das Experiment" features Morris Bleibtreu (Lola's boyfriend in Run Lola Run) in a role for which he won the Golden Space Needle for best actor at this year's SIFF. Bleibtreu plays Fahd, an unemployed journalist, currently driving a taxi, but with a plan to get his old job back. Fahd immediately comes off as quite determined and, perhaps a bit reckless, qualities which will set the action of the film in motion. Fahd applies for a job as one of the 'guinea pigs' in a study being conducted at a local university. He intends to record parts of the experiment using a tiny camera, cleverly concealed in a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He hopes that the images he will capture in the course of the two-week study will allow him to break such a sensational story that the magazine will offer him his old job back. The experiment in which Fahd is chosen to participate is quite simple: Twenty men are taken to a specially constructed 'prison'. Eight are told they are prison guards, the other twelve, inmates. The job of the guards is to maintain order and insure that the daily routine of the prison is followed. The prisoners are to follow orders. No violence is to be used, and any participant may leave whenever he wishes. You don't have to be Jane Dixon to realize that those last two rules are going to go out the window, and quick. Soon there is a clash of wills between Fahd and Berus (Justus von Dohnanyi), one of the prison guards, in a showdown reminiscent of Cool-Hand Luke - right down to the sadistic, solitary confinement of the prisoner in a 'black box'. This relationship between the vicious guard and the obstinate inmate is the linchpin around which all of the characters rotate. When a researcher suggests that one of the two men be removed, the lead scientist objects, insisting that it is necessary to have "dynamic factors" in such an experiment. In the end, the brutality of the prison guards is turned against the researchers, too. Berus soon explains to his fellow guards the necessity of brutal authority to maintain order, and what follows is a truly terrifying succession of verbal assaults, beatings, and humiliations. The defining element of the two groups, besides which side of the bars they are standing on, seems to be their clothes. Upon notification of their status as inmates, the men must strip naked and don a white prison frock, emblazoned only with a number. The guards, on the other hand, are shown into a room stocked with respectable blue uniforms and all of the paraphernalia that goes with it; nightsticks, handcuffs, flashlights, leather boots, playing cards. The immediate sense of status and identity the men feel is apparent on their faces as they gleefully snap their new toys onto their black belts and strut around the dressing room. It is worth pointing out that this film is based on an actual experiment which was conducted at Stanford in 1972. The study was halted on the fifth day, due to the violence of the guards; This film takes the experiment to a speculative sixth day. Hirschbiegel and all of the actors do a fine job, the direction not getting in the way of this idea-driven film. The first half of the film features a techno soundtrack which doesn't match the subject matter, but which, apparently, is necessary for any film to find financing in Europe these days. There is, however, a certain hip sensibility which lingers throughout the film, occasionally taking the edge off of the stifling mood, and making such a serious subject more watchable. This subject seemed especially appropriate given the current mood in America, showing, on a very small scale, what can happen when human rights are placed aside, even temporarily. 'Das Experiment' was utterly spellbinding, as much as I may have wanted, at times, to turn away from the screen. To the film's credit, I never doubted for a moment that the prisoners would have been as cruel as the guards, had they changed places, and it was this thought that gave the film some resonance, as simple as its premise may have been. © 2002 Shoreline Community College™ |