Dan M
Reviewer

      In 1971, Philip Zimbardo revealed a haunting side to man when he concluded one of the most controversial psychological experiments in recent history. Using a group of people, he placed them into a prison environment, allowing half to act as guards and half as prisoners. The experiment was terminated after only a few days to an apocalyptic revelation: the desire of man to control overwhelms the basic decorousness of the human soul. The German film "Das Experiment," allegedly based on this experiment, presents that conflict in a frightening brutality that shocks the audience not only in its bluntness but also in the calmness in which the atmosphere is presented.
 
      "Das Experiment," an intense dramatic piece, tells the story of 20 men who volunteered for a prison experiment. After breaking the group into prisoners and guards, each is given a role to play. One of the prisoners, an undercover reporter played by Moritz Leibtrau (Run Lola Run), continually pushes the guards to a point where ultimately a violent confrontation between two grays will occur, rather than a black and a white. As with any film, there are the stereotypical characters— the rebel, the sadist, the weakling, the angry one, etc.— but these expected characters allow an uninformed audience to connect to these characters on a much deeper level. The audience experiences the callousness as much as the prisoners in the cells.
 
      In this point exists the film’s major flaw. Its voyeuristic approach to showing something the normal public doesn’t see is rather contrived and unoriginal, especially since shows like Big Brother and Paradise Hotel now dominate entertainment markets. The film begins and almost immediately we know what is going to happen. It doesn’t leave a single surprise for the audience. Resulting in a contorted, but still relevant, point that humanity’s necessity for control can destroy everything it has struggled to build. The necessity of control is advertised by the presence of uniforms.
 
     In an environment strangely reminiscent of the concentration camps of the Holocaust, the prisoners and guards are defined by the uniforms they wear. The guards, brandishing night sticks and polished matching suits, walk up and down the rows of cages in a mocking manner, quietly torturing the prisoners in a Hitchcockian fashion. The voluntary captives, dressed in women’s prison uniforms, are subdued to a point where humiliation reaches a deeper level. One prisoner, not called by name but by his number, 77, is forced to stand with his mouth duct-taped in a fashion that would make Roman Polanski’s stomach turn.
 
     I don’t want to reveal too much about the events that occur in the film because it would debilitate the overall effect. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel allows the action and emotion to rise and fall, never truly allowing the audience to settle into the knowledge that the story being laid out is a work of fiction, reminding one of "Lord of the Flies" and "A Clockwork Orange." As the inevitable conclusion draws near, we are left sitting in agony because we know that there is no true happy ending possible, regardless of what situation is able to be presented.
 
     As the movie pushed forward, some famous cinematic quotes flashed through my mind: Luke’s speech in "Cool Hand Luke," and Jack Nicholson bouncing off the walls in "One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest," Al Pacino in "The Devil’s Advocate," each calling to mind the different tendencies of human nature (i.e. rebellion, insanity, evil). Strangely, after the credits were finished falling from the screen, I was reminded of something Abraham Lincoln once said. “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”