'Experimenter' Isn't Some Boring Scientific Biopic

If the name Stanley Milgram doesn't sound familiar, the experiment for which he's known likely does. In the early '60s, he performed an "obedience experiment" at Yale wherein a subject would be tasked to teach a learner how to remember pairs of words. For each wrong answer, the teacher was instructed to shock the learner, with the voltage amping up every time an answer was incorrect. By the end, participants were zapping their learners with dangerous shocks, even when the learners pleaded for them to stop.

These shocks, of course, weren't real, but the participants thought they were. What's startling was that more than half of the participants were willing to give the maximum shock to their learners, whom they later learned were actors in on the experiment. The troubling results, as well as the creativity of the experiment, made Milgram both famous and controversial. Michael Almereyda's new film examines the legacy of the social scientist and highlights the importance his experiment still has on our society today.

And thank God his movie isn't just some boilerplate biopic. Instead, its focus is just as much on the experiment as it is on Milgram, who is played here by a marvelously cool and collected Peter Sarsgaard.

Early on, the film is entirely devoted into showing how Milgram's experiment went down. Comedian Jim Gaffigan plays the learner, and several other recognizable actors, such as Anthony Edwards and John Leguizamo, play the various teachers. As each one delivers shocks and hears Gaffigan's screams, we can't help but wonder how we'd perform in the same situation. Would we go against our better judgement to deliver the full shock? Or would we demand a stop to the tortuous experiment? And this is just what the filmmaker wants us to think about.

Often, Almereyda has Sarsgaard address the audience directly in theatrical monologues. As such, he effectively breaks the flow of the story several times so that we stop to consider Milgram's work and what it says about human nature. While the director also brings up questions as to whether or not Milgram's obedience experiment was ethical due to the stress it caused participants, it isn't difficult to guess where Almereyda's thoughts on the issue lie. Toward the end, the director is careful to point out that of the people who participated in Milgram's experiment, more than 80 percent said they were "glad" to have done so, and thought it provided them with meaningful knowledge about themselves.

Perhaps for an audience, Almereyda's film could do the same.

Experimenter is playing at the Uptown Theater.