Who wants to play cop? C’mon. You know you want to bash some hippie skull, doncha? In August of 1971, the U.S. Navy funded an experiment to study the effects of being a member of the freedom-challenged community. Young men applied at random to the experiment on the promise of $15 a day for two weeks. For that sum, you get to be a psychological tool, which beats being a regular tool, but only because it’s temporary. Strangely enough, nobody actually wanted to play cop in this experiment, or so the drama contends. Maybe it was the 70s; I would bet strongly that any current random group of eighteen college aged boys will almost certainly include several guys who would rather be cop than robber.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) had this brainchild of testing prison conditions on random students. They weren’t so random; the kids had to answer an ad and then were given a psychological profile test. Then a coin was flipped to determine which nine kids were prison guards and which nine were prison attendees. The “prison” was created on the campus of Stanford University out of a faculty hallway; the offices were cleared of all objects and rudimentary attire and sleeping facilities were added. I think the cops had it easier; with eight-hour shifts, they had down time. The prisoners were prisoners 24/7.
It didn’t take very long for trouble to happen. Each prison guard shift of three “officers” created an alpha and the alphas took to authority with sickening enthusiasm. Roll call proves an issue when some of the prisoners aren’t taking their duties seriously. Prisoner 8612 (Ezra Miller) is punished. Repeatedly. After some quality me time in a closet (to get away from it all) and the twelfth remake of his bunk, he finally gets some sleep. Oh, we’ll just see about that, won’t we? Third shift alpha (Michael Angarano) is a beast. Hearing there was trouble before, he summons his best Strother Martin and makes everybody pay, starting with 8612. As the experiment goes from ugly to unconscionable, Dr. Zimbardo mostly stares in abject fascination and shouts down all detractors.
I’m not sure why a perfectly good documentary was made into a drama, and The Stanford Prison Experiment suffers for it. Now maybe it’s just me; but I’ve seen all these guys. “Hey, it’s the kid from It’s Kind of a Funny Story, and Will Stronghold from Sky High, and that weird short Napoleon dude from Ender’s Game.” There’s a constant mock reality going on – It’s not a prison made to act like a prison, and it’s filled with prisoners who aren’t criminals, guards who aren’t guards and students who are actors and on top of that, it’s a dramatic recreation of an artificial reality that actually took place. By the time Stanford introduced the Me from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, well, I could no longer take the film seriously.
This was a real thing. It happened and the results were … provocative. The Stanford Prison Experiment as a dramatic recreation of those events bites. Hmmm, “bites” isn’t quite right. This film is not bad, just depressing, and made me wonder what, if anything, was fudged. Unlike film not based on science, the drama undermines the message. You have to imagine The Stanford Prison Experiment, as it happened, like the Brokeback Mountain of scientific study – not many of you saw it, but it certainly caught the attention of those
who did. Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez here has taken a perfectly good documentary and made it into a drama. This isn’t an unforgivable offense – I mean, in a sense, it’s no different than a dramatic recreation of, say, a civil rights march for peace or the massacre at Columbine High School. The difference here is the results of the experiment are so striking that any difference between reality and recreation hinders the actual science involved.
Let me show you:
“That was insane. Those kids were tortured by their peers just because one was assigned ‘cop’ and one was assigned ‘criminal.’ “
“Are you talking movie or actual … ?”
“Well I saw the movie …”
“How do we know what’s true, then? Maybe it wasn’t so bad.”
And maybe it wasn’t; and maybe Mr. Alvarez got it 100% correct and I should appreciate the performances which brought such intense emotion. But I still wish this were a documentary.
♪The fake police, they live inside of my dorm
The fake police, treatin’ me like a worm
The fake police, on a power trip, oh, no
You know these sheets are cheap
And this bedding has lice
And I can’t fall asleep
‘Cause I’ve been harassed thrice tonight tonight
Yes they’re shouting at me
They’re making me pee
Every single night
In a bucket by my bed
Should have gone to camp instead♫
Rated R, 122 Minutes
D: Kyle Patrick Alvarez
W: Tim Talbott
Genre: Playing God
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Masochists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Social workers
♪ Parody inspired by “Dream Police”
