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THE STANFORD EXPERIMENT Send This Review to a Friend
The 1971 study in human behavior at Stanford University was a bust. But not this film made about it. “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez and written by Tim Talbott, based upon the book “The Lucifer Effect” by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, dramatizes the project in which a group of students were selected to play prison guards and another group chosen to be the inmates, then thrown together in a mock prison at Stanford University for a limited period.
The absurdity was to expect valid research results when both prison guards and students would be in effect acting, not in a real environment. This film depicts the guards immediately beginning to seriously abuse the prisoners to the point of terror, while the inmates suffer accordingly.
Supervising this misbegotten experiment, which had to be called off because of the vicious victimization, is Dr. Zimbardo, well-played by Billy Crudup, who conveys a messianic attitude. Zimbardo keeps pressing on and on until even he admits the undertaking has gotten out of hand and must stop.
A large cast portrays guards and inmates. All are excellent in taking the situation to the heights of cruelty and submission. It all seems very real, as if it’s a documentary. The film is chilling, but it is hard to get away from the fact that like the actors here, those part of the real deal would also be acting their roles as they perceived them.
As shown in other situations, human beings can be devastatingly cruel. Just consider history and events today. One hardly needs an experiment to prove it, much less with students acting their assigned roles. We get enough scandal of behavior by guards in real prisons. But as a film, this hits the mark. An IFC release. Reviewed July 17, 2015.
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