Das Experiment / The Experiment (2001) – 3/5

Prison experiment gone wrong

The following two paragraphs are my original short review from October 2015:

„Das Experiment“ is a German thriller movie from almost 15 years ago. It runs for 2 hours and was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. This is not the only very famous German film he made, because he is also responsible for „Der Untergang“. Hirschbiegel and lead actor Moritz Bleibtreu, around the age of 30 here, received awards recognition on really a lot of occasions and Justus von Dohnányi had his big breakthrough with this movie as well and received a German Film Award just like Bleibtreu. There are more German actors in here who are still somewhat famous quite some time later today. This includes Möhring, Gärtner, Monot Jr., Sawatzki and Berkel.

The premise is simple: 20 men are recruited to take part in a role play, in which 10 of them are prison guards and the other 10 are inmates. It does not take long until authority, testosterone and power turn the whole scenario into a complete mess that results in 2 casualties in the end and many more heavily injured, all of them emotionally basically. Early on, there is some joking about the whole situation, but things get far more serious pretty quickly. I thought this was a good thriller, very tense from start to finish, but very graphic as well, so this may not be for the easily offended. Violence is only psychological for almost the entire movie until it escalates physically towards the ending. I personally think that the way things turned out here is not too realistic, but it is not a problem at all to enjoy this as a fictional film, even if it is based on a real experiment. This film was so successful that there is an American movie from 2010 based on this one starring Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker. And, even more recently, there is another new American movie based on this one here with rising star Ezra Miller in the lead role. Overall, I recommend it, but be warned: This film is pretty tough to digest. Little final note to close this review: „Das Experiment“ was Germany’s submission to the Foreign Language Oscars, but did not score a nomination. One year later, Caroline Link’s „Nowhere in Africa“ won the Award.

Now in spring 2024, so almost a decade later, I decided to give this one a review and here are some more thoughts:

First of all, I stand with the rating of my original review here: Six stars out of ten or three stars out of five seems pretty accurate. If you look at other stuff by writers Giordano, Darnstädt and Bolinger, you can maybe even say that the outcome is better than expected. Their careers have not been glorious in terms of creativity gently-speaking. Cannot say the same about director Hirschbiegel here for whom this may be one of the most known films, but not the number one. Still, it is a movie that made waves outside Germany as well and thus for almost every actor in this film, it is a work that can be considered among their most known career effort. What is also interesting is that Bleibtreu plays a man with Arab background, but it fits in terms of looks. Early on, it seemed maybe that he would become friends with Möhring’s character as they were joking together, but as the film progresses the connection grows stronger then with Stokowski’s character or maybe he just felt sorry for the lonely man and eventually Berkel’s character is closest to him, maybe because the latter is the only one who was on the protagonist’s level in terms of alpha male mannerisms. In addition to Sawatzki, Maren Eggert should not be ignored, who serves as a romantic interest to the main character and she won a German Film Award too not long ago. I guess her scenes here serve as the opposite to the worrying prison situation and bring some kind of calmness and harmony. In the end, the two worlds clash and she fires shots too. I was a bit surprised that in the one scene when she sees a man who had just bludgeoned another to death that she did not just run. We also have some voice acting by Heiner Lauterbach and Fatih Akin in here. Bleibtreu was directed by the latter on several occasions.

As for the dead bad guy character here, they made sure that we do not feel bad for him. It was the Elvis impersonator who almost rapes Sawatzki’s character on one occasion. He also harassed her earlier already and forced her to strip naked in front of him. It was not clear if there he was also ready to physically assault her as von Dohnányi’s character got in the way there, the only act from this man you can kinda describe as good-spirited. Surely he was cruel, maybe the most sadistic of them all, but he was not ready to commit crimes against people who did not really do anything wrong. There was of course the inclusion of his smell that was featured multiple times and hit close to home. We have the other guards mock him non-verbally, but the real escalation came when Bleibtreu’s character confronts the man directly and that was something he could not forget. Bleibtreu’s character is urinated on later on and has to clean the toilet with his outfit and wear it afterwards and on both occasions JvD’s character make remarks about smell then or also when he talks about the protagonist’s girlfriend later on and how nice she smells. The bad guy eventually makes it out alive here, but it was close. It is Bleibtreu’s character making sure that Berkel’s does not kill the man, so a little bit of humanity was restored, especially with all he did to him. In the end we see the two lovebirds together at the beach, far away from the events. With these sequences involving Eggert’s character you could never be really sure when they took place, if maybe all this was before the experiment and they had broken up already, but when she finally shows up, we realize the two are still a couple. On a completely unrelated note about the cast, Stromberg fans will recognize Gärtner immediately. Edgar Selge is another cast member I have not mentioned yet. His scene in which he explains to Sawatzki’s character why he has no intention to stop the experiment was among the most interesting inclusions from the scientific perspective. Other moments I liked included the push-up solidarity within the group or the moments related to people from the outside coming to visit. Or pretty much all of Bleibtreu’s escalations against the guards and the consequences it had for him and also for the rest sometimes. This included the milk scene too, the one that started it all.

There were also some less realistic parts, like how, even after it all escalated, Selge’s character was just gone for a while and nobody was observing anymore. Strange to see the empty room when Berkel’s character asks loudly for the end of the experiment towards the camera. Aside from that, the entire premise I am struggling with a bit. There was a comment from one character that they should just keep going without further troubles for the next 10 days and get the money and all would be fine. Did not go this way. I doubt if there was a similar experiment, even if this is linked to actual events in Stanford, that it would really go this kind of wrong. The first meeting between Bleibtreu’s and Eggert’s character early on with the car crash was also a bit too far-fetched for my liking. Plus the background that her dad had died not long ago and she was just on the way back from the funeral. Overall, I still believe that the good outweighs the bad for this movie. I also liked the presentations early on how we are told what jobs they worked, what we find out about their family backgrounds and their motivations to take part in this experiment. Some quotes also stayed in the mind, for example JvD’s „good father“ moment. Also, there is a claustrophobic note to this film, but it is not as massive as you would have guessed knowing that almost the entire film takes place at a correctional facility. I was still wondering what the entire project was really about like who was in charge, who paid for it, who cared about the results etc.? I don’t mean Selge’s character there. He is of course a scientist, but rather in an executive position. I still find it strange how he was far away when it all escalated and had to run to get there and still got his punishment too. I hesitate to call it „fair share“, even if he was negligent and stubborn and should have listened to Sawatzki’s character. But in the end, we all know better. Earlier he was kinda right when saying nothing happened that they did not consider a possibility to happen.

As I get to the end of the review, let me say that I thought the soundtrack worked well too. Of course, the Marianne & Michael song was as absurd as it gets on one occasion and this was of course to create the biggest possible difference between the shocking events depicted and the harmonic German Volksmusik tune you hear at the same time. The song I liked more from a creative perspective was „Wouldn’t It Be Nice?“ from The Beach Boys. That is one feel-good tune and it had pretty much the same intention as the one I just described. Overall, a lot was done right with the outcome here and this is also why the film became pretty popular and stayed so over the years. I also liked the decision to not focus on all study participants because this was just not possible given the running time. There were ten on both sides, but real insight we only get into a quintet on every side approximately. One even changes sides. Or is forced to. Alright, this is it then. Not a must-see, but worth it and even I as somebody who likes Brody and Whitaker would say that you may wanna see this one here before the remake. The bizarre Prison Break (not a good show by any means!) connection by one of the writers there also rings false to me, but enough of that. We may talk about that one on another occasion and this one here gets a thumbs-up from me. A prime example of wild German cinema across the turn of the millennium and maybe a good double feature choice with „Die Welle“.