Forty-four years after its execution, director Kyle Patrick Alvarez has brought an intense and emotionally packed depiction of the Stanford prison experiment to the big screen.
Headed by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, the experiment, which took place in the Stanford Psychology Department’s basement, consisted of 24 male students who were assigned the role of either prisoner or guard in a mock prison. The research team, then, observed the student’s actions to measure how normal people when given unrestricted power.
Influenced by decades of controversy, the movie creates a discussion of the broader vice of human nature through its establishment of the ethical and emotional complexities pervasive in the experiment. As such, the film is split into three equally emotional dimensions: the guards, the prisoners, and the researchers. By isolating these three dimensions, Alvarez establishes multiple emotional connections with the audience that, when combined, form the ethically complicated effects of the experiment. Additionally, the emotional dissonance amongst the dimensions engages the audience in the movie, as the gaps between the dimensions prompt the audience to consider pressing questions such as the reasons for why prisoners continued participating.
At the same time, Alvarez effectively portrays the mindset and perspective of the characters. The development of Prisoner 8612’s emotional transition from when he playfully giggles at the feminized sight of himself in the prisoner’s dress to his later mental breakdown allows the audience to understand the grave shift from his initial humor and carefree state.
Furthermore, in a rebellion scene, the depiction of the mindset of the prisoners, who lack sleep and schedules, is established through warped music that distorts the audience’s sense of time. Additionally, as the rebellion scene begins with instrumental music, the marching of footsteps to sudden, intense music as the guards attack the prison cells creates a sentiment of anticapation and places the audience in the shoes of the guards as they approach the prison cells. The addition of rapid alternation between slow and faster cuts from a bird’s eye disorients the audience, which places the audience into the warped view a person in power has.
Interestingly, the movie portrays Zimbardo’s actions as not just an arbitrary exercise of unconstrained power, but as actions influenced by his genuine belief that the experiment is for the greater good. To parallel Zimbardo’s uncertain character, one guard maintains his morality, which establishes that the central point of the movie: the line between good and evil is more complex than linear.
The movie effectively delivers emotionally attuned performance by the young actors. Prisoner 8612’s emotional collapse is too real, making me feel almost uncomfortable as I watched. These accurate depictions of the experiment’s physiological effects reinforce the movie’s original sympathetic sentiment that it evoked in the beginning.
It is ultimately this sympathetic sentiment that Alvarez successfully brings to the viewer’s mind the core argument of the nature of man and the influences of power and compels the audience to question the roots of physiological cruelty and the motives of the original experiment.
