EXPERIMENTER: THE STANLEY MILGRAM STORY

US, 2014, 98 minutes, Colour.
Peter Sarsgaard, Winona Ryder, Anthony Edwards, Jim Gaffigan, Kellan Lutz, Dennis Hayesbert, Anton Yelchin, John Leguizamo, Lori Singer, Vondie Curtis-Hall?, Josh Hamilton.
Directed by Michael Almereyda.

Perhaps you too had to ask, who is Stanley Milgram. And why a film about him?

The first answer is that he was the son of Jewish migrants who made their way to the United States, who was well educated and, by the beginning of the 1960s, with his interest in sociology and psychological ramifications, began a series of experiments at Yale University. Hence the title of this film.

While the film is a biography, it is something more of a portrait, not a particularly long running time, so dipping into Milgram’s experiences, his initial tests, reactions to his tests, some favourable, some unfavourable, and then other investigations that he conducted. More of an academic, with the touch of introversion, there are some glimpses of his personal life, especially his initial encounter in an elevator and then, awkwardly, at a party, with the young woman who was to become his wife, mother of his children. There are glimpses as the years go on, she sometimes working with him, some tensions with the children. But this is always secondary to his experiments. It is good to see Winona Ryder as Milgram’s wife.

We are introduced to the experiment where two people volunteer to be teacher and pupil and waivers are signed about their free participation in the experiments. The pupil goes into a room where there is machinery while the teacher stays outside, observed by the supervisor and Milgram and others behind a glass panel. The aim of the exercise is for the teacher to test the pupil and, after experiencing an electric shock himself so that he knows what it feels like, to give the pupil and electric shock for every mistake made, the intensity of the shock increasing every time.

The aim of the experiment is to show how most people are conditioned to obey authorities, even to inflicting punishments when their feelings are against doing this. The film offers a collage of quite a number of teachers, the variety of their reactions, yet their always following through. One of the main connections made, with some visuals in the film of Adolf Eichmann and his defence in his trial in Israel and the memory of what Hannah Arrendt called “the banality of evil”. Ordinary people obeyed authorities and inflicted pain on others.

Not everyone agreed with Milgram and some said that he was crawl, actually inflicting pain, and were critical of his experiments.

One of the devices of the film is to have the actor Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Milgram, turning to camera and often communicating his thoughts and reactions to the audience, involving them more in the action, for and against his experiments. Another interesting device is the filming of his experiment for the television program, with William Shatner and Ossie Davis playing teacher and pupil, discussing how they will perform the experiment – which we, the audience, have also seen in performance than making the assumption that we have seen the real experiment.

Two other experiments are dramatised, one familiar where a person stands in the street staring into the sky and through conscious or unconscious peer pressure, people start to look up into the sky for no reason at all except that others are doing it. In another experiment, people are photographed and their reactions to examining the portrait of themselves become the subject of research.

Milgrom died at the age of 51 in 1984 after work at Yale, Harvard, in New York City – and the film makes an interesting point at the end when he is taken to hospital, his wife urging the receptionist for a doctor, the receptionist interested first in the filling out of every form, which his wife does.

The Experimenter offers audiences quite a lot to think about in terms of responsibility, decisions, expectations of authority and fulfilling those expectations.


1. The story? Dramatised? Stylised? Documentary touches with the tests and research?

2. Audience knowledge about Milgram? About his tests? The results? About peer pressure and succumbing to obey orders?

3. The 1960s to the 1980s? Psychology, sociology, universities, research, publications, television interviews? The range of staff, the search, collaboration, publications, reputations, yet Milgram being attacked for controlling, even torturing those participating?

4. The cinematic devices: the narrative, Milgram talking to camera, the staging the tests, rear projection and stylised for the car ride and the visit to the lecturer? The repetitions of sequences, from other angles? The discussions, Milgram interviewed and grilled on television? The re-enactment for the television film, with William Shatner and Ossie Davis? The TV re-enactment of sequences seen by the audience – which are also re-enactments seen by the audience?

5. The strong cast?

6. Peter Sarsgaard as Milgram, born in the 1930s, the Jewish family, coming to the United States, studies, at Yale, his reputation? The elevator, meeting Sasha, at the party, her later recounting their meeting, together, marrying, the family? The diner and ice cream with the children? The heart attack, going to the hospital, his dying at 51? Milgram confiding his story to the audience?

7. The staging of the test, the staff, Milgram watching through the glass? The rules of the test, teacher and student, the contrived choice, audiences think it was a test of the student and it being a test of the teacher, and perseverance with punishing, the electric shock? The questions, the pairs of words, memorising them, the student getting so many wrong, the shocks? Audience reaction, to the teacher administering the shocks, arguments about stopping, but not stopping, the different reactions? The audience belief in the student at first, discovering that he was only acting, receiving no shocks? The teachers continuing despite their protests? Expectations of authorities, obedience, conforming? The variety of teachers, the later repetitions? The student, in performance, his collaboration with Milgram? The experiment with the sky, planting people in the street, the peer pressure, people looking up into the sky?

8. The photo test, people poring over their photo, critical of therapy reduction? The carrier with the books from Germany, his participating in the photo experiment?

9. The results of the punishment test, the connecting this visually with Adolf Eichmann, Hanna Arrendt, the banality of evil? The results coming up continuously to explain people’s behaviour, the Germans at the time of the Holocaust?

10. The critique of Milgram, that he was torturing people, that this was immoral? The continued quoting of the results?

11. The years passing, his work, becoming a celebrity, publication, translations? At Yale, at Harvard, in New York?

12. The experience for Sasha, her being his assistant, the critical student condemning her conforming? The clash, in the diner, with the children, Milgram’s apology?

13. The student, forthright in her attack on him and Sasha?

14. The illness, going to the hospital, the nurse at the desk, conformism in the filling in of forms, and Sasha doing this?

15. The effect on the audience of this experience, learning about Milgram himself, sharing in his experiences?