One can assume that the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment has by now been studied and processed enough. It’s a template for freshman psychology courses, an introduction to what an institution and system of rules can wreak on the behavioral models of the average person.In 1971, 24 male Stanford students, were selected by Dr. Philip Zimbardo to be either prison guards or prisoners with the intention of monitoring the behavior of both groups. The individuals, and the integrity of these systems themselves were monitored and studied over the course of six days (the original plan called for two weeks, but things took and infamously unforeseen turn). There have even been feature films in recent memory taking this on, some pretty sophisticated and entertaining (Germany’s Das Experiment), some trashy, mediocre, and forgettable (The Experiment starring Adrien Brody). So how does this particular adaptation expand upon the themes and revelations gathered during the experiment? How does it reach higher ground than the obvious “people can do bad things” cliché? Thankfully, the context of our modern, post-Bush administration world gives its subject layers hitherto unexplored.
The film leaps into life with a rapid pace. Over credits we’re shown a montage of the advert being typed up and laminated, the eventual applicants being interviewed; our cast of characters essentially personally introducing themselves. The period-piece nature of this film feels authentic and significant to the tale being told. It is the time of Vietnam, Richard Nixon, and disenfranchised youth all across America. It is not a hopeful time. The students, though hidden underneath shaggy hair and seemingly lacking in hygiene, are largely comprised of familiar faces, including a physically drained and emotionally terrorized Ezra Miller (who impressed in We Need To Talk About Kevin). Billy Crudup plays Philip Zimbardo as an obsessed man who strays a little too far into complicit territory of his own experiment, at times becoming a literal - instead of figurative - prison warden. The whole cast of students does an incredible job of making us care, sucking us in, and immersing us into this story. It’s a shame, then, that Olivia Thirlby’s character, Zimbardo’s ex-student and girlfriend, isn’t given anything more substantive to work with than, “Philip, you’re becoming a monster!”
On day one of the experiment, our guards and prisoners find small moments to chuckle at their predicament. “What are you in for, partner?” a quippy Miller jokingly asks his “cell-mate”. The situation is ludicrous, and prisoners and guards alike find humor in the various roles of behavior that they seemingly need to adopt. Over time, though, the lines between the reality of this experiment and the simulated sense that this is indeed a prison become too blurred for some to handle. Two subjects can’t deal with the sleep deprivation and the aggression of the guards, and go through the shockingly difficult process of leaving the experiment. Though most of the violence that occurs here is emotional, the threat of someone getting their head bashed in seems very real throughout the film, especially once somebody actually does. After only two days, the tribal nature of these cordoned off groups of people kicks in, and the joke stops being laughed at. It is now “us versus them”, and they’re taking our beds away, making us do push-ups at 4am, and jeopardizing our sanity. What are you going to do about it?
The most despicable guard is played by Michael Angarano. It quickly becomes clear that his character, affecting a Southern prison-guard drawl earning him the nickname of “John Wayne”, is the kind of guy who enjoys his newfound power. He relishes the fact that these poor kids will do whatever he says. He is god, and he can reaffirm that feeling of superiority at any time he chooses in any manner he sees fit - either forcing his inmates to do push-ups, sing songs in a high-pitched voice, or, ultimately, simulate sex-acts. This is where the film inevitably reverberates through the annals of trauma of the aughts to remind us of the state-sanctioned torture we’ve been processing. It strikes a chord in our modern post-Mission Accomplished world. The terror this guard inflicts on his subjects is cold, detached, and utterly indifferent toward the dignity of his prisoners. He doesn’t care about their feelings. They are a set of numbers to him. After only a few days in a simulated prison, fairly normal university students fell so far as to force each other to simulate sex-acts and turn against each other. It gives us a glimpse of what the situation can escalate to if these were soldiers in a bloody, traumatizing battlefield, instead of the basement of an Ivy League university. After all, Abu Ghraib is borne of the same dehumanization and loss of identity that a system such as Zimbardo’s Stanford Experiment was mirroring.
