''Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story'' is a 2015 American

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Michael Almereyda Michael Almereyda (born April 7, 1960) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Early work Almereyda studied art history at Harvard but dropped out after three years to pursue filmmaking. He acquired a Hollywood agent on ...

, based on the 1961 Milgram experiment. The film stars

Peter Sarsgaard John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. His first feature role was in '' Dead Man Walking'' in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films ''Another Day in Paradise'' and ''Desert Blue''. That same year, Sarsga ...

Winona Ryder Winona Laura Horowitz (born October 29, 1971), professionally known as Winona Ryder, is an American actress. Originally playing quirky roles, she rose to prominence for her more diverse performances in various genres in the 1990s. She has recei ...

Taryn Manning Taryn Manning is an American actress and singer. She is best known for portraying Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett in the Netflix original series ''Orange Is the New Black'' (2013–2019), Cherry in ''Sons of Anarchy'' (2008–2010), Nola in ''Hus ...

Kellan Lutz Kellan Christopher Lutz (born March 15, 1985) is an American actor and model. He made his film debut in ''Stick It'' (2006), and is best known for playing Emmett Cullen in ''The Twilight Saga'' film series (2008–2012). He has since played Pos ...

Anton Yelchin Anton Viktorovich Yelchin ( rus, Антон Викторович Ельчин, p=ɐnˈton ˈvʲiktərəvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtɕɪn; March 11, 1989 – June 19, 2016) was an American actor. Born in the Soviet Union to a Russian Jewish family, he emigr ...

John Leguizamo John Alberto Leguizamo Peláez (; ; born July 22, 196013:04) is an American actor, comedian, and film producer. He has appeared in over 100 films, produced over 20 films and documentaries, made over 30 television appearances, and has produced ...

Lori Singer Lori Singer (born November 6, 1957) is an American actress and musician. The daughter of conductor Jacques Singer, she was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and raised in Portland, Oregon, where her father served as the lead conductor of the Oregon ...

Dennis Haysbert Dennis Dexter Haysbert (born June 2, 1954) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as baseball player Pedro Cerrano in the '' Major League'' film trilogy, Secret Service agent Tim Collin in the political thriller film '' Absolute Power'' ...

, Anthony Edwards, and

Jim Gaffigan James Christopher Gaffigan (born July 7, 1966) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. His material often addresses fatherhood, laziness, food, religion, and general observations. He is regarded as a "clean" comic, using l ...

. The film was released on October 16, 2015, by

Magnolia Pictures Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor. It is a subsidiary of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films. Mag ...

. It is also one of the final films to feature Lori Singer before her retirement in 2017.

Plot

The film is based on the true story of famed social psychologist

Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.Blass, T. (2004). ''The Man Who Shocke ...

, who in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

that tested the willingness of ordinary humans to obey an authority figure while administering electric shocks to strangers. In the first half of the film, it is shown how the experiments are conducted, with nearly every test subject succumbing to the pressure of the circumstances and administering shocks to a stranger, despite the stranger begging him to stop. Between the experiments, it is shown how Milgram meets Alexandra (or Sasha), who will become his wife and mother of two children. The second half of the film shows how Milgram struggles with the public outcry about the ethics of the experiments and how his career advances as he becomes a professor in New York City and continues to study social interactions and social pressure in more benign experimental settings, including the

small-world experiment The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested ...

, the lost-letter experiment, the street-corner (or gawking) experiment, the

familiar stranger A familiar stranger is a stranger who is nonetheless recognized by another from regularly sharing a common physical space such as a street or bus stop, but with whom one does not interact. First identified by Stanley Milgram in the 1972 paper ''T ...

experiment, and various experiments that he makes his students carry out. Archive footage occurs frequently, either as recordings that Milgram watches or as a backdrop for entire scenes. Milgram's work continues until he dies from a heart attack at the age of 51. In the final scene, the street-corner experiment is repeated in the present day, with a cameo of the real-life Sasha Milgram. In a mid-credits scene, more archival footage is shown.

Cast

Production

Although director

was aware of Milgram's work, it wasn't until his girlfriend began taking a class on him that Almereyda became interested. Subsequently, he found himself reading Milgram's '' Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View''. According to Almereyda once he started reading " einstantly saw how filmable it was" becoming increasingly interested in making it into a film the more he went on. In filming, Almereyda wanted it to be "playful" in nature as he felt that's how Stanley Milgram himself would have made it. Almereyda decided to have Milgram break the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

based on viewing films of his in which Milgram would talk to the camera, reminding him of

Rod Serling Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series ' ...

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

. From this Almereyda figured having the character talk to the camera "seemed natural and in fact essential to include that in the movie." On May 13, 2014,

and

joined the cast. On June 30,

, Anthony Edwards, and

Edoardo Ballerini Edoardo Ballerini (born March 20, 1970) is an American actor, narrator, writer, and film director. On screen he is best known for his work as junkie Corky Caporale in ''The Sopranos'' and the hotheaded chef in the indie film ''Dinner Rush'' (20 ...

joined the cast.

Principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...

began on June 5, 2014, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Release

The film premiered at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

on January 25, 2015. On March 26, 2015,

acquired distribution rights to the film. The film was released on October 16, 2015, in a

limited release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...

and through

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

Reception

''Experimenter'' received positive reviews. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an 85% approval rating based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The consensus reads: "Led by a gripping performance from Peter Sarsgaard, ''Experimenter'' uses a fact-based story to pose thought-provoking questions about human nature." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a score of 81 out of 100 calculated from 20 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Experimenter 2015 films 2015 biographical drama films 2010s historical drama films American biographical drama films American historical drama films Drama films based on actual events Films set in 1961 Films set in the 1960s Films shot in New York City Films directed by Michael Almereyda 2015 drama films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films