Rating: 
Summary: Message film with great performances
Review: "Das Experiment" is an often grueling excursion into the dark recesses of the human psyche. Modeled on a controversial project that took place at Stanford University in 1971 (EVERY review mentions this little factoid, don't they?), the movie attempts to take a serious look at the human need for power over other people. Since the film is German, comparisons to fascism and National Socialist Germany are impossible to ignore. Do we really need another film reminding us of the dangers of fascism? Apparently so, even though the constant harping on this theme quickly becomes tiresome to the nth degree. Personally, I would like to see more films dealing with the dangers of communism and rampant leftism, but I am probably in the minority with this opinion. Anyway, "Das Experiment" the movie works well enough despite the usual clichés associated with the old "humans run wild" motif. As I watched the film I could never shake the impression that I had seen this same film in another form somewhere else. That sensation came about because I have seen these same themes in numerous other film and television projects. Meet Tarek Fahd. This young chap ostensibly works as a taxi driver, but he is actually a journalist attempting to come up with a gangbuster story that will put him on the map at the local paper. In an effort to make his career, Fahd signs on as a guinea pig for a famous psychologist's latest experiment. After a wearisome round of rigorous physical and mental tests, the journalist and several other people make the grade and learn what the experiment is about. According to the good doctor and his staff, Fahd and his fellow volunteers will stay in a mock prison for two weeks. Eight of the men will assume the role of guards, and the other twelve will serve as the prisoners. Strict discipline, rigid rules, and actual lockdowns will govern the lives of the prisoners in this experiment. The guards have the power to punish anyone who misbehaves (with moderation, of course) and must learn to distance themselves from their charges both physically and mentally. At first, keeping the two groups segregated is a bit of a problem, but as the days pass it becomes easier and easier to see the "convicts" as contemptible and thus deserving of their degraded position. As the guards and prisoners begin to drift into their respective roles, big problems develop. One of the screws, a smelly, timid fellow named Berus, lets the power associated with his status as a guard go to his head. It's easy to see how such a process comes about, after all, since the guy is essentially a nobody in the outside world. In the prison, he's a big shot wearing a uniform, a badge, and possesses the ability to punish others. Berus's main rival among the prisoners is Fahd, who constantly berates the man and picks fights over a host of minor issues. Insults, defiance, and outright violence result from these confrontations, and the other guards and inmates are soon sucked into the fray. Even the staff monitoring the situation soon discovers the folly of this ill-conceived experiment as Berus and the guards go way beyond the parameters assigned to them at the beginning of the project. Deaths result as the experiment progresses, naturally, as does a big showdown between Berus and Fahd at the end where the film pounds the necessary messages into the heads of the viewers. A subplot involving Dora, a woman Fahd met immediately before enrolling in the experiment, inserts itself at crucial moments in the movie. I am slightly critical of the film's message, but I did like it as a whole. I think it was the performances that won me over in the end. Although the dialogue is in German, the emotional turmoil all of the characters undergo comes through crystal clear. I even had some surprising sympathy for the Berus character. I was ambivalent about Fahd. He is the hero of the story, the caring journalist who exposes the abuses of the psychological study to the larger world, but he is also the one who bears a major responsibility for the ensuing chaos. In order to get the big story, Tarek must work hard at upsetting his fellow inmates and the guards so he can spice up his article. He constantly pushes everyone's buttons, so much so that his bunkmate eventually reveals a secret in an effort to get the reporter to knock it off. By the time Tarek Fahd ends up in the black box, I felt completely indifferent to his character while feeling an immense amount of empathy for the suffering of his fellow prisoners. His performance, however, achieves just the right balance of cellblock malcontent and horrified observer. Watch "Das Experiment" if you like compelling psychological thrillers, but don't expect to see things you haven't seen elsewhere. The movie is shocking at times, and during the last thirty minutes it is downright riveting. The DVD edition of the film boasts a few trailers for other movies and a widescreen picture transfer. After viewing the film, I asked myself whether I would buy a copy of the movie. The answer was a resounding no; one time through was enough for me. I suggest renting first since the film's bleak atmosphere and graphic violence could turn off many viewers. "Das Experiment" isn't the sort of happy go lucky film you would want to watch repeatedly. If you do want to indulge in repeat viewings, you probably have a psychological problem of your own to deal with.
Rating: 
Summary: Power corrupts in The Experiment.
Review: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is one of the themes running through "The Experiment." A group of twenty men volunteer to spend two weeks in a prison setting under the auspices of a German university. One group will be the jailers, the other, the prisoners. The jailers are given neat uniforms to wear; the prisoners are dressed in formless smocks. Television cameras are mounted strategically throughout the mock jail and the activities of the guards and prisoners are monitored closesly in a TV control room supervised by the university faculty and staff. Almost immediately the viewer observes that a few of the guards and prisoners consider the experiment to be a joke and some testing of limits takes place. One of the prisoners, Fahd, is actually a cab driver who also moonlights as a reporter. He has been given special glasses to wear which record everything he sees. At first he is intent on getting a good story; later he will struggle to survive. Fahd immediately begins to challenge the authority of the guards, who don't know how to respond to him. They have been told to maintain order without using physical force; violence of any kind is strictly prohibbited. But after meeting amongst themselves, they decide to take a hard line with Fahd and the prisoners. Much as a Marine Corps drill sergeant might do, the guards isolate the prisoners, yell at them, force them to do push-ups, and withhold privileges. This behavior works at first, but Fahd leads a revolt, the prisoners briefly escape, and the guards resort to sterner measures. The university staff are at first delighted with the results of the experiment, even though it is evident that the guards are becoming more physical in their treatment of the prisoners. It is not long before the two faculty members conducting the experiment begin to argue about the escalating violence in the jail. The senior faculty member convinces his colleague to allow the experiment to continue. All that I have described takes place early in the film. As the jailers become more comfortable in their role as guards and their confidence in their power over the prisoners increases, the character flaws in a couple of guards become evident. They become the worst sort of bullies. Neither the other guards nor the University staff control the outbursts of violence and rage displayed by the bullies. It is clear even within the first half of the film that disaster is inevitable. Other reviewers have mentioned the experiments at Stanford University, which bear a striking similarlity to the experiment dramatized in this film. Stanley Milgram at Yale has also demonstrated convincingly that people will obey orders even when it appears that they are hurting what they should consider to be innocent victims. Just as in Milgram's experiements, the guards in the film believe that the prisoners have brought their punishment on themselves. I have not mentioned some of the subplots that confuse the telling of this story -- for example, Fahd has a girl friend he met just before entering the prison. Her story is clearly peripheral to the events taking place in the prison. Even with this unneccesary diversion, I remained genuinely interested in the film. If the action did not always make sense, the general theme of the film that power corrupts was made well. This is a movie most people will not soon forget.
Rating:
Summary: Message film with great performances
Review: "Das Experiment" is an often grueling excursion into the dark recesses of the human psyche. Modeled on a controversial project that took place at Stanford University in 1971 (EVERY review mentions this little factoid, don't they?), the movie attempts to take a serious look at the human need for power over other people. Since the film is German, comparisons to fascism and National Socialist Germany are impossible to ignore. Do we really need another film reminding us of the dangers of fascism? Apparently so, even though the constant harping on this theme quickly becomes tiresome to the nth degree. Personally, I would like to see more films dealing with the dangers of communism and rampant leftism, but I am probably in the minority with this opinion. Anyway, "Das Experiment" the movie works well enough despite the usual clichés associated with the old "humans run wild" motif. As I watched the film I could never shake the impression that I had seen this same film in another form somewhere else. That sensation came about because I have seen these same themes in numerous other film and television projects. Meet Tarek Fahd. This young chap ostensibly works as a taxi driver, but he is actually a journalist attempting to come up with a gangbuster story that will put him on the map at the local paper. In an effort to make his career, Fahd signs on as a guinea pig for a famous psychologist's latest experiment. After a wearisome round of rigorous physical and mental tests, the journalist and several other people make the grade and learn what the experiment is about. According to the good doctor and his staff, Fahd and his fellow volunteers will stay in a mock prison for two weeks. Eight of the men will assume the role of guards, and the other twelve will serve as the prisoners. Strict discipline, rigid rules, and actual lockdowns will govern the lives of the prisoners in this experiment. The guards have the power to punish anyone who misbehaves (with moderation, of course) and must learn to distance themselves from their charges both physically and mentally. At first, keeping the two groups segregated is a bit of a problem, but as the days pass it becomes easier and easier to see the "convicts" as contemptible and thus deserving of their degraded position. As the guards and prisoners begin to drift into their respective roles, big problems develop. One of the screws, a smelly, timid fellow named Berus, lets the power associated with his status as a guard go to his head. It's easy to see how such a process comes about, after all, since the guy is essentially a nobody in the outside world. In the prison, he's a big shot wearing a uniform, a badge, and possesses the ability to punish others. Berus's main rival among the prisoners is Fahd, who constantly berates the man and picks fights over a host of minor issues. Insults, defiance, and outright violence result from these confrontations, and the other guards and inmates are soon sucked into the fray. Even the staff monitoring the situation soon discovers the folly of this ill-conceived experiment as Berus and the guards go way beyond the parameters assigned to them at the beginning of the project. Deaths result as the experiment progresses, naturally, as does a big showdown between Berus and Fahd at the end where the film pounds the necessary messages into the heads of the viewers. A subplot involving Dora, a woman Fahd met immediately before enrolling in the experiment, inserts itself at crucial moments in the movie. I am slightly critical of the film's message, but I did like it as a whole. I think it was the performances that won me over in the end. Although the dialogue is in German, the emotional turmoil all of the characters undergo comes through crystal clear. I even had some surprising sympathy for the Berus character. I was ambivalent about Fahd. He is the hero of the story, the caring journalist who exposes the abuses of the psychological study to the larger world, but he is also the one who bears a major responsibility for the ensuing chaos. In order to get the big story, Tarek must work hard at upsetting his fellow inmates and the guards so he can spice up his article. He constantly pushes everyone's buttons, so much so that his bunkmate eventually reveals a secret in an effort to get the reporter to knock it off. By the time Tarek Fahd ends up in the black box, I felt completely indifferent to his character while feeling an immense amount of empathy for the suffering of his fellow prisoners. His performance, however, achieves just the right balance of cellblock malcontent and horrified observer. Watch "Das Experiment" if you like compelling psychological thrillers, but don't expect to see things you haven't seen elsewhere. The movie is shocking at times, and during the last thirty minutes it is downright riveting. The DVD edition of the film boasts a few trailers for other movies and a widescreen picture transfer. After viewing the film, I asked myself whether I would buy a copy of the movie. The answer was a resounding no; one time through was enough for me. I suggest renting first since the film's bleak atmosphere and graphic violence could turn off many viewers. "Das Experiment" isn't the sort of happy go lucky film you would want to watch repeatedly. If you do want to indulge in repeat viewings, you probably have a psychological problem of your own to deal with.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately entertaining, but oh, so slow to begin !!
Review: A good friend lent me this DVD and raved about it's gripping & chilling content, and it's origins from the real life Stanford Prison Experiment....however, I came away somewhat dissapointed with this tale.
The first ninety minutes of the film are rather tepid and lacklustre with a uneven amount of character development, and the initial few days of incarceration are not exactly filled with mounting tension. After several false starts ,the conflict swiftly picks up between the antagonistic lead prisoner (an undercover reporter) and a power crazed & sadistic guard. Then, the film takes on quite a captivating and claustrophobic mood, and brutally violent in its conclusions.
Typical of German cinema, "The Experiment" has a rather surreal tone to it's depiction of the sterile world of the mock jail, however I would have preferred the film to have played a few more stronger cards earlier in the piece, rather than saving them all for the final twenty minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Experiment in prison becomes all too real!
Review: An advertisement invites men to volunteer to take part in an experiment. They say no one will get hurt and their cameras are on twenty-four hours a day. out of a group of men, some will be prison guards, the others prisoners. Those as the prison guards must not play guards, but be real guards. They do and they get too caught up in the prison play. The "prisoners" must fight back. The experiment becomes real. This film contains male nudity and some female nudity.
Rating: 
Summary: A prison experiment gone mad and real.
Review: Awesome, Awesome, Awesome, I WAS SHOUTING AT THE SET for that one guy Tarek Fahd to beat the living XXXXX out of Mr. Stink prison guard Berus. That Movie is so real in it's authentic form of paranoia, humiliation, torchure, you start to become out-of-control yourself. The good acting well compensates for the pace and plot of the movie. I felt like I was in the cell with him. That was a good movie. In the next sequel we'll probably see the same prisoners as the new prison guards, and the guards as the real prisoners. LOL Recommendation to anyone interested in seeing this movie. The German language subtitled in english just makes you more involved with the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended, but not for the faint-hearted.
Review: Based on the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, this remarkable German film manages to deftly combine thriller, sci-fi, social commentary & character study into one. The premise is simple: a group of men volunteer to take part in an experiment where they are placed in an prison & divided into groups of "guards" & "prisoners" for two weeks to study aggressive behaviour within the prison environment.
None of them have been in prison before. Occupations range from teacher to taxi driver & even a professional Elvis impersonator!
The only catch is that by taking part in the program & becoming prisoners, the men are automatically stripped of all their civil rights for that time period, & have their names replaced with numbers. Unfortunately the "guards" start taking their responsibilities too far & cross the line into violence & repression.
What the men AREN'T told is that only one of them will stand a chance of getting out alive with the money: everyone else must die, so soon both groups are fighting within their own ranks too. It's at this point that some of the men decide it's time to start fighting back, as it appears that if they remain passive they won't survive the fortnight behind bars.
Among the prisoners is an undercover reporter looking for a story, and if he survives this could land him a front page exclusive.... but his fellow prisoners aren't too keen on him cashing in on their misery when they find out so this places him at an even greater risk.
Absorbing & quite disturbing at times, THE EXPERIMENT rates as one of the best movies I've seen in 2003. The movie is subtitled, I'm not sure if it's also available in an English language version. Brilliantly Directed, filmed & written this is a movie that will stay with you long after the end credits have rolled. A must-see.
DVD extras include interviews, a beind the scenes doco & trailers.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended, but not for the faint-hearted.
Review: Based on the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, this remarkable German film manages to deftly combine thriller, sci-fi, social commentary & character study into one. The premise is simple: a group of men volunteer to take part in an experiment where they are placed in an prison & divided into groups of "guards" & "prisoners" for two weeks to study aggressive behaviour within the prison environment.
None of them have been in prison before. Occupations range from teacher to taxi driver & even a professional Elvis impersonator!
The only catch is that by taking part in the program & becoming prisoners, the men are automatically stripped of all their civil rights for that time period, & have their names replaced with numbers. Unfortunately the "guards" start taking their responsibilities too far & cross the line into violence & repression.
What the men AREN'T told is that only one of them will stand a chance of getting out alive with the money: everyone else must die, so soon both groups are fighting within their own ranks too. It's at this point that some of the men decide it's time to start fighting back, as it appears that if they remain passive they won't survive the fortnight behind bars.
Among the prisoners is an undercover reporter looking for a story, and if he survives this could land him a front page exclusive.... but his fellow prisoners aren't too keen on him cashing in on their misery when they find out so this places him at an even greater risk.
Absorbing & quite disturbing at times, THE EXPERIMENT rates as one of the best movies I've seen in 2003. The movie is subtitled, I'm not sure if it's also available in an English language version. Brilliantly Directed, filmed & written this is a movie that will stay with you long after the end credits have rolled. A must-see.
DVD extras include interviews, a beind the scenes doco & trailers.
Rating:
Summary: German Cinema is Back!
Review: Did it ever leave? What seems like a recent surge of wonderful movies from Germany (Lola Rennt, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, and Goodbye Lenin) this movie kind of sneaks in under the radar. I had the privilage of seeing this movie as a new release in Heidleberg Germany. I can say honestly that this movie is still a captivating today as it was almost 5 years ago. As a friendly caution, be prepared for wonderfulk suspense that climaxes in some very brutal scenes!
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Extremely affecting. This movie will make you think and feel, something that I think is missing from most American movies. As amazing as the story and acting are, the cinematography and editing are also fantastic; innovative and commanding. Yes, there is violence, but there is also much much more. If you can, see it.
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