REVIEW:
German cinema of the 1970s was a maverick art form, with directors as diverse as Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder relentlessly pursuing personal visions and presenting a phantasmagoria of remarkable works. To judge from director Oliver Hirschbiegel's expertly gripping Das Experiment, German cinema now aspires to provide Hollywood with boffo English-language-remake fodder.
Based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box (which was inspired by a real-life experiment conducted at Stanford University in the early '70s), the movie tells the story of an experiment in human behavior engineered by scientists-they solicit 20 men and put them in a simulated prison setup for 14 days, the payoff being 4000 marks at the end of their stay. Twelve of the men are "prisoners," eight are "guards." The guards are under strict instructions not to use violence to get the results they need. Sure, that's a directive that's going to stick.
The movie's main focus is on Tarek Fahd (Moritz Bleibtreu), an itinerant cab driver with major father issues who's secretly chronicling the experiment for a magazine story. As a prisoner, his wiseass attitude gets him into trouble with the guards. He's also a bit conflicted; the night before going into the experiment, he meets a woman who could turn out to be the love of his life, provided he still has one.
As the center of the experiment fails to hold, the movie builds up to a climax of near-unbearable tension; the whole thing is remarkably well-done. But just look at the movie's final image and tell me that it couldn't have come straight out of a better-than-average Hollywood thriller. I'll put down money that an American version of this, most likely with Brad Pitt in the Fahd role, hits theaters by 2004 at the latest.
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Das Experiment
Release Date: September 20
Starring: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel
Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.