In the first week of any undergrad Introduction to Psychology course, professors will trot out one of two case studies. They can go with Stanley Milgram’s test on obedience and punishment (dramatized by the late Robin Williams in what must be one of the all-time greatest episodes of Law and Order: SVU), or Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford. These two trials have become such landmarks in the field of behavioral analysis because they’re clear-cut, scandalous, and dramatic. In more direct words, they’re Hollywood gold mines.
Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s dramatization of the latter, logically titled The Stanford Prison Experiment, presents viewers with an odd case study all their own. What do audiences make of a film that feels too tidy, too thematically straightforward, and too predictable to be real, but indubitably was? Who do viewers blame when true life plays out like a pat studio movie, and then an independent filmmaker retells it with total fidelity? The circumstances of the legendary experiment may be common knowledge among the well-educated, but even viewers unfamiliar with Zimbardo’s work can make a solid guess as to the film’s outcome after the first act. But Alvarez’s hands are tied; there’s no adding twists to history.
In 1971, Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo (played with villainy befitting Zimbardo’s pencil goatee by Billy Crudup) gathered 24 young men to participate in a study that’d replicate the conditions of a prison environment. By the flip of a coin, he divided them into a group of “guards” and a group of “prisoners”, each with clearly delineated roles to assume. The Aviator-clad guards stripped the prisoners, deloused them, outfitted them in rags, and replaced their names with numbers. For the guards, Zimbardo issued the simple instruction to keep the prisoners under control. As the participants got caught up in this deranged game, Zimbardo sat behind a panel of monitors, watching as human nature degraded before his very eyes.
The experiment was scheduled to play out over two weeks, but Zimbardo pulled the plug after six days. The social cues that he had imposed on the prisoners and guards proved more effective than he had ever dared to imagine. Within the first 24 hours, the ostensibly “normal” volunteers had sunk to unanticipated depths of desperation and sadism. All it took to activate the latent brutality in the guard referred to colloquially as John Wayne (Michael Angarano) was a pair of sunglasses, a uniform, and the permission to do so. People, the results suggest, are simply as evil as their situation allows them to be.
The film’s ‘70s milieu offers Alvarez a chance to deck his actors in a bevy of majestic wigs, but his ambitions are clearly rooted in the present day. As the film nears its conclusion, especially in the dialogues Zimbardo shares with his wife-to-be and fellow researcher Christina (Olivia Thirlby), it foregrounds a markedly modern take on the banality of evil. While the words “Abu Ghraib” never cross anyone’s lips, the prisoners’ dress deliberately evokes the gross violations of human rights that transpired at America’s “enhanced interrogation” stations. The chatter about the highly questionable morality of the experiment verges on obviousness, but Alvarez has a lot of support behind him.
His squadron of promising young actors come through across the board, none more so than vaguely reptilian Ezra Miller as volatile prisoner #8612. Miller seethes with explosive energy, whipping himself into an outraged frenzy in the span of a moment. Along with cinematographer Jas Shelton, Alvarez works wonders with the confined space of the prison, conjuring claustrophobia and sparseness from a few rooms and a hallway. (It takes about 5 whole minutes for Stanford Prison Experiment to out itself as a play in film’s clothing.) And when the script isn’t speechifying about That Which Is Right And Wrong, it incrementally ups the tension smoothly and subtly. Writer Tim Talbott designates the key conflicts between the prisoners and guards early, and gradually enflames minor slights until the experimental setting is completely forgotten and the participants revert to their basest impulses. His dialogue captures the prisoners’ confusion, frustration, and helplessness with frighteningly vivid specificity. One prisoner just wants his glasses back. It’s a simple request, but when he’s denied it, the deprivation of his personal agency enrages him exponentially more than fuzzy sight.
Almost against its will, the film follows an excessively clear-cut path. The self-evident nature of the experiment’s results made it a watershed moment for behavioral psych, but such boldfaced definitions of meaning are the enemy of art. This case study may be best returned to the file cabinet.
