El experimento

"The Experiment" is a kind of movie you won't forget easily. It is an amazing spiral of fear, horror and anguish.

A taxi driver decides to be an human guinea-pig for a strange experiment. Twenty men. Two groups. Guards vs. thieves. The prize is money. Every man will have money.

After two days something gets wrong. The taxi driver, who is a reporter too, wants to face the guards. So he provokes the guards: they can't use violence against the prisoners...

After more days the situation becomes more extreme. The guards want to impose their dominion on the prisoners. And now the situation is out of control...

The script isn't really original, but it's been developed in a satisfaction way. The direction is dynamic. If the Americans do movies like Germans, we'll have more interesting products.

Taxi driver and freelance journalist Tarek Fahd spots an advert in a newspaper for volunteers to take part in a psychological experiment over two weeks. He arrives along with a group of others, to be divided up into prisoners and guards before being placed into a simulated prison and provided with rules, Tarek being prisoner number 77. Initially everyone is enjoying themselves but soon the guards tire of the prisoners taking the p*ss and decide it is time to clamp down on their behaviour. As they realize that they have no limit on their powers, the actions of the guards become increasingly brutal and uncaring.

Based on the infamous experiments carried out at Stanford in the 1970's, this film had it all going for it in terms of being an effective thriller while also looking at the ways that human nature will gravitate towards the cruel once they are placed in positions of power. I decided to watch this film because it seemed interesting on this basis but also very topical considering the behaviour of the US soldiers in the Iraq prisons – mostly poor 'white trash' types who were corrupted when they suddenly found themselves in a position they had never been in before – control. Like them, the characters here gradually get more extreme – just like they did in the real experiment as well. With this topicality it is no surprise that I was easily taken in by the film and was never really bored by it. Being a thriller in its own right, the film has to settle into the eventual action conclusion but even this works pretty well and doesn't detract from what has gone before in terms of interest.

This is not to say it is perfect, because it could have been much better than it was. The constant cutting to Tarek's girlfriend now and in flashback only took away from the film and she could have still played her part at the end with much less time during the main body of the film. Also it became a little too far-fetched for the sake of drama – a recent television drama in the UK did it differently by actually recreating the same experiment as opposed to this film which needed to go harder and faster in order to reach the eventual running and fighting stage! But it still works and, to be honest, it is well worth seeking out for the 'human nature' aspect alone – it had a special resonance in Germany but it is hard not to be put in a thoughtful mood given recent events in Iraqi military prisons.

The cast are roundly good and all slip one way or the other in a convincing manner. Beibtreu is good once he gets past the stage where he is making trouble for the sake of it – this is necessary to speed the descent into cruelty but it was laid on a bit thick at the start. After this his performance is much more evenly balanced and he is a good lead. I struggled to pick up the names of all the others because they were mostly unknown to me but the head guard was very good while the rest of the cast did more than just deliver their pigeon-holed characters, where really they could have been nothing more than 'prisoner who goes crazy', 'timid guard', 'angry guard', 'silent prisoner' etc – they weren't, they were all pretty real people.

Overall this is not the best thing to come to if you are after a sort of documentary drama about the original experiment but it is still a very good film. It is exciting and dramatic while still having a bit of a brain on it – an asset made more interesting by what we have seen in Iraq over the past few months with guards becoming even worse than those we see in this film! Not a perfect film but a well made one that is interesting, involving and exciting and one that is well worth looking up.

Without fancy tricks and clichés, this movie tells us why riots occurs, why hatred spreads, and how to solve it.

In the beginning of this movie, the main character (prisoner no.77), an ex-journalist who hopes to take his job back, participates in a experiment in a mock prison for 2 weeks in order to record down this story, and publish it on the newspaper. Furthermore, he taunts and insults mock prison guards who are also the participants in this experiment so that he can make this story more interesting. However, things become worse and worse...

I am really surprised that this movie doesn't either glorify main characters, nor malign bad guys. Everyone has their characteristics, and their interaction is cruel but practical. We can see how the whole thing becomes worse. Don't stereotype this German story as a reflection of Nazism, because this movie is a warning for every culture which the power is overused. I am really glad that German dares to make this movie without too much clichés and fancy tricks. If you are tired of clichés in Hollywood films, this is a great movie for you.

I saw this film recently on the Sundance Channel. I could not stop watching. After seeing the prison pictures from Iraq, the film fully explored the reasons for the abuse of prisoners. When I read some of the reviews posted, I noticed how many dismissed the film as contrived and not plausible. I wonder if any of those reviewers would like to modify their dismissal of Das Experiment. Human behavior under stress often declines to the lowest common instinct. It reminded me of an adult Lord of the Flies. Degradation and humiliation seems to exactly follow what happened in Iraq. As a veteran who spent most of time working on Military Mental wards, I witnessed a number of abuses, as force had to be used patients were acting out or lost control, but all those memories seem pale compared to the horrors of the Iraq prison camps. Since life imitates art, this makes the film even more profound.

This German take on the Stanford prison experiment has additional layers of authenticity. Well made and interesting, masterfully acted and is much preferred to the Hollywood version.