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Parents' Guide to

Experimenter

By Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Well-acted, thought-provoking drama about role of authority.

Movie PG-13 2015 90 minutes
Experimenter Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

EXPERIMENTER is the chronicle of world-renowned psychologist Stanley Milgram's famous series of social experiments, most notably his "obedience experiments" of the 1960s. While a young professor at Yale University, Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) oversees an experiment for three years in which a subject is asked to play the role of "teacher" in an experiment about the possible benefits of consequences for learning. Each "teacher" is told punish the "learner" -- who's in the next room -- with an electric shock for each incorrect answer. In reality, the "learner" (Jim Gaffigan) is a collaborator in the experiment, which is actually focused on the teacher's behavior as he/she debates whether or not to shock the learner. Milgram, inspired by infamous Nazi Adolf Eichmann's attitude toward his war crimes (i.e. he claimed to be following military orders he couldn't disobey), finds that 65 percent of the teachers continue to shock their learner without stopping -- obeying their instructions despite having the free will to walk away. The movie primarily deals with Milgram's professional life -- which includes a lot of criticism of his ethics -- but does include a bit about his personal life, especially about his courtship of Sasha (Winona Ryder), a former ballerina he meets on the way to a party.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

Sarsgaard shines in this unconventional biopic of controversial psychologist Stanley Milgram. EXPERIMENTER will make audiences think, squirm, and wonder whether they would have had the strength to question authority in these famous experiments. As famous actors pop up on screen to play the teachers in Milgram's experiments (Anthony Edwards, John Leguizamo, Taryn Manning, etc.), it's clear that, despite discomfort, most people will do as they're told. But what if doing as you're told ends in someone else's pain? What if it's a direct order to hurt someone else?

Ryder and Sarsgaard have a believable chemistry, and Gaffigan is memorable as the learner who's supposedly being shocked in the experiments but is actually part of the staff. Milgram often breaks the fourth wall to discuss his life, put events in context, and even to complain. Sarsgaard's portrayal is compelling enough not to let this atypical narrative device fall flat or get cheesy. Talking to the camera genuinely works because Milgram is such a driven, interesting man with a fascinating reason to delve into the idea of obedience. His later coining of the "six degrees of separation" idea gets short shrift, but ultimately this is a finely acted and directed look at a scientist who changed the way we think about human behavior.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about Experimenter's style of having the character address the audience directly. How do Stanley's monologues help audiences get to know him better? Is it effective?

  • How accurate do you think the movie is to who Milgram was as a person and how he lived his life? Why might filmmakers decide to make changes to real events?

  • What happens in the experiment? What does the experiment reveal about human behavior? Do you think you would have obeyed until the end or resisted the instructions?

  • Do you think Milgram's experiment was ethical? What are the correlations between blind obedience and atrocious behavior? When is it appropriate to disobey or resist authority?

Movie Details

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