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EXPERIMENTER
Sundance Film Festival 2015 - PREVIEW in ENGLISH by SCOTT FOUNDAS (www.variety.com) - USA: Dal 25 GENNAIO
(Experimenter; USA 2015; Biopic drammatico; 97'; Produz.: BB Film Productions/FJ Productions/Intrinsic Value Films/Jeff Rice Films)
See SHORT SYNOPSIS
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Titolo in italiano: Experimenter
Titolo in lingua originale:
Experimenter
Anno di produzione:
2015
Anno di uscita:
2015
Regia: Michael Almereyda
Sceneggiatura:
Michael Almereyda
Cast: Taryn Manning (Mrs. Lowe) Winona Ryder (Sasha Menkin Milgram) Kellan Lutz (Shatner) Peter Sarsgaard (Stanley Milgram) Anton Yelchin (Rensaleer) John Leguizamo (Taylor) Anthony Edwards (Miller) Dennis Haysbert (Ossie Davis) Lori Singer (Florence Asch) Josh Hamilton (Tom Shannon) Jim Gaffigan (James McDonough) Donnie Keshawarz (Bruno) Vondie Curtis-Hall (Curtis) Edoardo Ballerini (Paul Hollander) Emily Tremaine (Shelia Jarcho)
Musica: Bryan Senti
Costumi: Kama K. Royz
Scenografia: Deana Sidney
Fotografia: Ryan Samul
Montaggio: Kathryn J. Schubert
Makeup: Lany Barry
Casting: Billy Hopkins
Scheda film aggiornata al:
27 Gennaio 2015
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Sinossi:
IN BREVE:
La vera storia del famoso psicologo sociale Stanley Milgram, che nel 1961 ha condotto una serie di esperimenti comportamentali atti a testare la disponibilitĂ della gente comune a obbedire alle autoritĂ tramite scosse elettriche. Le sue vicende vengono raccontate partendo dall'incontro con la moglie fino alle proteste pubbliche che i suoi test hanno suscitato.
SHORT SYNOPSIS:
Famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans willingness to obey authority.
Experimenter is based on the true story of famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans willingness to obey by using electric shock. We follow Milgram, from meeting his wife Sasha through his controversial experiments that sparked public outcry.
Commento critico (a cura di SCOTT FOUNDAS, www.variety.com)
MICHAEL ALMEREYDA DISSECTS THE LIFE AND WORK OF CONTROVERSIAL PSYCHOLOGIST STANLEY MILGRAM IN A HIGHLY STYLIZED BIOPIC WORTHY OF ITS SUBJECT.
The controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram gets a biopic as polymorphous as one of his own research studies in âExperimenter,â a highly formal, always fascinating movie from writer-director Michael Almereyda, who here delivers his most fully realized effort in the 15 years since his modern-dress âHamletâ starring Ethan Hawke. Almereyda conceives of Milgramâs life and work as a kind of constantly evolving theater piece and runs with the idea, resulting in a decidedly Brechtian bit of filmmaking that routinely breaks the fourth wall and employs other bits of theatrical artifice to tell its tale. Such old-school indie-art-movie quirks wonât be to everyoneâs liking, but for those who imbibe, âExperimenterâ offers a heady brew of theories about the essence of human nature, and a Peter Sarsgaard performance that catches Milgram |
in all his seductive, megalomaniacal brilliance.
Milgram made his name in the more permissive, laissez-faire era of university-sponsored scientific research previously explored in films like âKinseyâ (which co-starred Sarsgaard) and âProject Nim,â and itâs one of âExperimenterâsâ throughlines that, just because Milgram may have employed some scientifically questionable methods, that doesnât invalidate the merit of his data. When the movie opens in August 1961, the Yale-based Milgram is just embarking on his most famous/infamous study, the âMilgram experiment on obedience to authority figures,â in which two randomly selected test subjects are assigned the respective roles of âTeacherâ and âLearner,â with Teacher instructed to ask Learner (situated in an adjacent room) a series of multiple-choice questions.
If and when Learner answers incorrectly, Teacher is to administer a remote-controlled electric shock, the severity of which would increase with each subsequent wrong answer. The catch: Unbeknownst to Teacher, Learner is actually a member of Milgramâs |
lab team, cued to answer questions incorrectly on purpose and to shout in pain upon receipt of each successive âshockâ (when, in fact, no actual shocks are being delivered).
An American-born Jew of Romanian-Hugarian extraction, Milgram was obsessed by the origins of genocide and the human capacity to rationalize violent behavior, and as Adolph Eichmann stood trial in Israel and Hannah Arendt wrote about âthe banality of evilâ in the pages of the New Yorker, Milgram was busily putting theory into practice, watching with a mix of fascination and horror as some two-thirds of his nearly 800 test subjects administered the full range of electric shocks. The subjects believed they had no other choice but to obey the directives of Milgramâs lab assistants, that they were therefore âjust following ordersâ â a condition Milgram would go on to term âthe agentic state.â
Milgram himself watched these experiments through a two-way mirror, not |
unlike a cinema spectator. And, except for a few brief flashbacks detailing Milgramâs courtship of his wife, Sasha (Winona Ryder), the first 30 minutes of âExperimenterâ afford us the same perspective, as one guinea pig after the next (played by a whoâs-who of character actors including John Leguizamo, Anton Yelchin and Anthony Edwards) climb into Milgramâs hot seat. Because Almereyda makes us complicit to all the behind-the-scenes illusion, these scenes take on a certain grim hilarity, as the test subjects react (or donât) to the increasingly frantic cries of Milgramâs resident Learner, the affable accountant Jim McDonough (Jim Gaffigan). But even here, âExperimenterâ implicitly asks us to consider the far-reaching implications of Milgramâs scenario, and how, in the position of Teacher, we ourselves would respond.
When âExperimenterâ broadens its scope, it does so in an inventively stylized fashion that mixes real locations with rear projections (some static, some moving) and breakaway |
sets, and features Sarsgaard directly addressing the audience in character â even, at one point, breaking into an impromptu musical number. Itâs a risky strategy that Almereyda â a formalist whose early films made extensive use of the arcane PXL Vision analog video format â pulls off deftly (with due credit to production designer Deana Sidney and cinematographer Ryan Samul), because it seems of a piece with Milgramâs own notion of himself and the way Sarsgaard plays him, as a kind of director for whom all the world was a potential stage.
On several occasions, Almereyda even has Sarsgaard trailed onscreen by a full-size adult elephant â the proverbial one âin the roomâ that Milgram was prodding at in much of his research. Meanwhile, for the good doctor himself, the obedience experiments would become something of a monkey on his back â an early success that he could never quite eclipse, |
a Wellesian figure forever dwelling in the shadow of his âCitizen Kane.â
Almereydaâs dense, deeply researched yet succinct script confidently winds its way through Milgramâs publication of his theories (in the 1974 book âObedience to Authorityâ), his overnight celebrity, the ensuing accusations of ethical impropriety, and the general unwillingness of people to believe what Milgram was saying: that most people, relieved of direct responsibility for their own actions, might be capable of almost any atrocity. A markedly more serious film about science and the politics of science than either âThe Theory of Everythingâ or âThe Imitation Game,â âExperimenterâ goes on, in its final stretch, to touch on Milgramâs subsequent, equally groundbreaking studies, including the Harvard-based âsmall worldâ experiment, which first postulated the theory now known as âsix degrees of separation.â
Befitting the movieâs many layers of artifice and self-reflexivity, Milgram (who died of a heart attack in 1984) even lives to see |
his research dramatized as a 1976 network television movie, âThe Tenth Level,â though the scene in Almereydaâs film devoted to its making (with Dennis Haysbert and Kellan Lutz in ill-cast cameos as stars Ossie Davis and William Shatner) is one of the few that seems completely tone-deaf.
Milgram lived for his work, and âExperimenterâ is fundamentally an attempt to understand him through it. That means relatively little time devoted to Milgramâs personal life, but enough to know that he wasnât an easy husband or father, and that Sasha (superbly played by Ryder) â a firm believer in her husbandâs research â was willing to take him on his own terms. (In a touching coda, the real Sasha Milgram herself appears onscreen.) âLife can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,â Milgram proclaims more than once in âExperimenter,â quoting Kierkegaard. In looking back on Milgram and his experiments more |
than 50 years after the fact, Almereyda finds much that lingers and haunts. So, too, this movie, long after the lights have come up. |
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