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Das Experiment
There's more to movies than Hollywood. Woody Allen has made a career out of not being Hollywood. Every so often you Yanks will see something by a bunch of Brits called Four Weddings and a Notting Hill in Gosford Park and notice it too.
Probably the first time I realised there was more than big budget out there was when I saw my first Luc Besson movie. Since then I've become an avid Independant lover, underdog movies that cry out to be seen call to me: Cube, Pi, El Mariachi, the list is endless, but does not include anything by Gregg Araki.
Tonight Pix and I went to see Das Experiment a film based upon the Stanford Prison Experiment where twenty men were divided amongst prisoners and guards and set strict non-violent rules. After a while emergent personality types took over and the whole thing took on a life of its own.
Despite the fact the movie was in german with subtitles (and at some points the subtitler was just being damned lazy) it was absolutely a thriller through and through. It all made sense, people reacted in ways I could fully vindicate. The free-thinker becomes the driving force behind the group assigned to play the prisoners and a control freak becomes the guiding force behind the guards. It was scary how realistic it all seemed, how the violence and humiliation was explained and justified as part of the experiment.
If you get the chance, try and see it, it goes quite a good deal towards proving that we're nothing more than sentient animals.
Mar.29.2002