Experimenter

Stanley Milgrim did a lot of psychological experiments, the most infamous being the Obedience tests. Find out about them and more in Experimenter.

This is a stylised documentary in which many situations from Milgrim's testing life are reenacted. We get the Obedience trials, in which a person continues to shock someone because a person in a coat told them to. We also get some of his other experiments, but that's the main focus of the film, and the one that the film is talking about the impact of. Stanley himself often addresses the audience to explain what he was thinking and what conclusions he drew from it all. That's a nice inclusive touch. We follow him throughout his career and those experiments keep coming up, and continue to be relevant. The main point about them is... these were not the results anyone was expecting.

Also there is discussion about ethics. Is it ethical to mislead people like he did? This is the way we find out what's going on with people, but is that what we should be doing? (While the movie doesn't even hint at this point, I'm going to bring it up, what of the medical knowledge discovered by the Nazis? - yes, this means I lose.) It's a tough thing, and one that I suspect is still being debated hotly.

A decent film, check it out if you can.

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