So just watched The Experiment on Sky+, a film loosely based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Anyone else with anytime can see this until 26/07.

Incredibly chilling. That's the only way I can summarise it. I was wondering if anyone else had seen this (or the original German film - Das Experiment), and what other people's thoughts were on it?

My complaints are minimal with it. I know this is based on a true story (albeit messed around with), but I would have been interested to see just where this could have been taken, or indeed, any other ways this could have been taken.

Spoiler

For example, at no point do the guards tell the prisoners what the rules actually are. Would an experiment in which the prisoners are made completely aware of the rules that the guards expect them to follow are, be more willing to go along with everything?

Or what if there was no light in the red bulb? That had been the idea going through my head whilst watching this. That the scientists weren't paying any real-time notice to what was going on. The guards could puch the boundaries on the punishments they deemed acceptable.

But yeah, thoughts?

 

Seen Das Experiment, in fact only watched it last a few days ago. It's pretty good. Hard watch, long - not seen the western version.

Downfall, the director's second, was a better film. Das Experiment was a hell of a debut though. It's definitely worth seeing.

 

Having read up on them, I'm off to go find Das Experiment.

Is Downfall the often parodied "nien nien nien NIEN" film (as seen here)? If it is, that is easily one of the better films of recent times.

 

Yeah. it is. I've watched Downfall 3-4 times - it's easily one of the best (if not the best) movies made about the 3rd Reich's end.

Wikipedia tells me that the film broke the last taboo about depicting Hitler, by casting a german actor as him - he also studied for months, to better mimic the Führer's austrian accent & mannerisms.
That's... interesting.

/thread derail

Will also be watching Das Experiment asap.

 

I've seen Das Experiment a couple times, and it's a good movie, definitely worth watching. It gets a bit hard at some points though.

And I've been meaning to see The Downfall/Der Untergang for some time, knowing it's from the same director I have good expectations of this film.

If someone has seen both the German and American version, is there any difference in the remake ? Or is it just a matter of "subtitles are too hard to read lololol" ?

 

The common consensus among the film-lovers I know (who are surprisingly rare in film-making) is that the remake of The Experiment is fantastic if you've never seen the original. In other words, it achieves perhaps two-thirds of the 'point' and one third of the 'soul', but with a dramatically enhanced visual element and a few more zeroes added to the budget. In this, it can be likened to every other Hollywood remake of European films, ever.

I've not seen the new one, but I'd be amazed to see if they pull off some of the quirks the original had. The original also had some tremendous care put into it's principal photography - it was shot chronologically, some of the actors used were actually claustrophobic, and I'm pretty sure the Swiss camera genius Klausmann used (s)16mm*, which gave it the indie, grainy look it had. He did things with that camera that were absolutely extraordinary, and it's pretty hard to be remotely revolutionary in cinematography on a downgraded format two years after The Matrix was released. It was exceptionally well edited as well. Some of the transitions could put Lawrence of Arabia to shame. Alright, not really, but almost.

So yeah, the remake was probably better made as a film, and obviously had a 'name' cast, which might make it the superior watch depending on what you're looking for in cinema.

/nerdgasm.

*If it wasn't super 16, they did something while scanning, or used deliberately degraded (or just cheap) film. I worked on a project that attempted the same look two years ago with 35mm and the only way Technicolor could achieve it, despite all their digital prowess, was to scan the raw neg repeatedly until light degraded the image. Even then it was desaturated almost beyond usability and the process softened the focus massively. Bear in mind Das Experiment was shot in the days before you could achieve that in two minutes in Motion. Technically it really is something of a masterpiece.

 

not that I'm downloading the original or anything, but I'll be able to watch it in a day or two (crappy internet speeds atm for whatever reason). Having checked internet, the original does look better. And I always put subs on a film anyways, so foreign films don't bother me too much.