Experimenter

Michael Almereyda – 2015 – USA 

While at Yale in the early 60s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments on obedience that were controversial in their day and are still studied and debated in classrooms now.  The Holocaust loomed large over Milgram’s premise, as he undertook to demonstrate that otherwise perfectly respectable and compassionate people are perfectly capable of inflicting pain on others as long as an authority figure takes responsibility for the consequences.  It may not have been the most scientific experiment since he wasn’t doing objective research and already knew what he wanted to substantiate, but it’s no less fascinating and incriminatory of human nature.  Peter Sarsgaard, one of the best actors around, plays Milgram in this slightly arty biopic written and directed by Michael Almereyda, who doesn’t seem a likely candidate for this type of film; I know him from his aggressively surreal thrillers Nadja (1994) and The Eternal (1998).  Milgram narrates his own story in the film, with Sarsgaard frequently addressing the camera directly, and many scenes feature absurdist conceits like old-fashioned rear-projections and elephants in corridors.  I don’t know that the effect works very well, and I’m sure it was intended to spice up what Almereyda considered fairly dry material, but it isn’t homogeneous, so it just feels forced and affected.  That’s unfortunate since the story of Milgram’s project is definitely interesting enough to warrant a less crafty treatment.  I applaud Almereyda for wanting to differentiate his film from more routine true-life dramas by using an unorthodox style, but it’s too little of the wrong thing, and the film ends being 80% normal and 20% weird instead of one or the other or a balance between the two.