EXPERIMENTER Review
All Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) cares about is finding out what makes us tick. From feelings of happiness, to love, to cruelty, to curiosity or even obedience, Stanley Milgram makes it his life’s duty to come to terms with human behavior and their positive and negative results. For director/writer Michael Almereyda’s EXPERIMENTER, all the focus is on Dr. Milgram’s controversial yet nonetheless eye opening studies and experiments, for better or worse.
In a way, it would be hard to blame the filmmaker for focusing the majority of his film on Dr. Milgram’s experiments moreso than the man himself. Even so, the film’s and Milgram’s tantalizing finds and questions regarding humanity as a whole only push the audience further from getting to know the scientist behind these engrossing studies. That being said, Mr. Almereyda and co. do their due biographical diligence by guiding audiences through Milgram’s experimental career, beginning with his radical and much criticized studies on obedience at Yale University in the early 60’s all the way to his later studies in the mid 80’s which dealt with much more amiable human interactions and connections. Throughout this journey, audiences see Milgram (and the world at large) slowly deal with the repercussions and implications of his findings.
Through these complacent biographical characteristics, what helps EXPERIMENTER stand out is the style and tone that persists in every scene. Beginning with Milgram’s obedience experiment, where test subjects are told by an authoritative figure to shock another subject if they fail to answer a question correctly, no matter how much that subject cries out in pain (even though the shocked subject is very much in on the experiment), Almereyda and Milgram himself watch with growing horror and fascination as a disturbing amount of test subjects continue to administer harsh electrical punishment simply because an authoritative figure tells them to do so. In these scenes, EXPERIMENTER bristles with dread and slow agony as we see the results of Milgram’s harsh but otherwise (physically) harmless experiment playing out like some kind of doctoral horror flick. For Milgram, these tests give him glimpses of an answer regarding the worst of human behavior and its effects such as The Holocaust, a moment that fully illustrated the power of authority and obedience, which inspired Milgram to peer into what exactly makes a human being commit unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. As he (and the world) find out through these Yale experiments, all it takes is a confident man in a lab coat. Throughout these sequences and the rest of the film, as Milgram breaks down his world, Almereyda attempts to break the audiences’, throwing in stylistic touches ranging from Sarsgaard’s fourth-wall breaking anecdotes to seemingly intentional cheap set designs and costumes (ex. ridiculously fake hair and beard pieces, projected backgrounds, cheap sets). While in any other film, these budgetary hang ups would only serve to point out the film’s flaws, Almereyda utilizes these budgetary constraints to create a playful and off-kilter film about science experiments.
Even as EXPERIMENTER shows genuine excitement and awe for Milgram’s experiments, as every element of the film (editing, directing, cinematography, lighting, acting) flows perfectly together, it’s a shame that we hardly get to know the actual man behind the (scientific) process. While the film grants viewers the bare minimum into Milgram’s much more subdued personal life, outside of Milgram’s fascination with the causes of the Holocaust, we never get much more clarity into the man’s thoughts. Additionally, his supporting cast, while perfectly game to play their roles with an equal amount of playfulness as the film itself, get little to do occupying boards rather than real people. Even so, despite not really playing out of his usual roles of subtly cocky and confident men, Sarsgaard is the perfect fit to play a man constantly looking to see what’s behind the curtains of humanity, approaching every interaction with a mix of contempt and genuine fascination for his fellow man.
Despite a primary focus on Milgram’s experiments moreso than the humans behind them, it’s hard to deny just how damn entertaining EXPERIMENTER becomes. Seeing how Milgram ticked would’ve helped Michael Almereyda’s film reach grander heights but even so, the filmmaker accomplishes more than enough making a film about human behavior experiments scary, haunting and even a tad fun(and informational to boot).
3.5/5
