Compliance

A decidedly Milgramish cinematic examination

Compliance concerns a story that is essentially an amalgam of 70 real-life incidents. Undoubtedly it embellishes for dramatic potential, but the brilliance of the film rests not in its compliance (pun definitely intended) with the real events, but rather how a disturbing and unnerving story can develop from a series of actions that from the outside seem completely illogical, but in the framework upon which they build on each other contain just enough internal logic to explain why a story such as this could happen and actually did happen. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

When the film premiered at Sundance 2012, it was greeted with many walk-outs. This wasn't a response reserved only for the Sundance screening; it happened at theatres all over the country. Most of the criticism regarded the seeming idiocy of the characters to behave as they do. What I suspect, however, is that many of these dissenters have not read social behavioral theorist and psychologist Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority. I was 16 when I first read it, not as an assignment for my AP Psychology class, though that is where I was first introduced to it. The Milgram experiments were conducted in 1961, when Yale Professor Stanley Milgram theorized that during the Holocaust, many of the accomplices to the Nazi agenda were in fact morally opposed to the party's policies, but aided in their execution simply because they were told to by a higher authority. The experiment involved "the teacher" and "the learner" as well as "the confederate." Teacher and Learner were placed in separate rooms where neither could see the other. The Confederate would issue orders and guidance to The Teacher, who would ask The Learner questions, and for each wrong answer, The Teacher would issue an electric shock to The Learner; shocks would increase 15 volts upon each wrong answer. The Teacher would continue to issue shocks, under the reassurance from The Confederate that they would not be held responsible for any harm to The Learner, etc. The Teacher could not see, but could hear, the reaction from The Learner, which escalated into pleading, screaming, and crying in pain. In reality, there were no electric shocks. Prior to the experiment, Milgram polled psychologists and colleagues, who believed very few subjects would go beyond strong shocks. They were wrong. In his first study, 65% of subjects advanced to administering the strongest shock of 450 volts, despite admitting they were uncomfortable doing so.

It is very easy to sit back and declare people's actions to be illogical and beyond moronic from our third-party, hands off point of view. It's not so easy to imagine how an illogical situation can develop from seemingly simple levels of logic; and how going from point A to C in one huge jump would be preposterous, but going from A to B to C in gradual steps actually exhibits an inherent, twisted logic. Showing us that development is Compliance's greatest success.

This is the best film I've seen yet of 2012. It has not the entertainment or laughs of my second favorite film, 21 Jump Street, but the kind of fascinatingly detailed mechanisms of structure that allow us to believe an improbable scenario; not to mention, the self-reflection spurred by watching how all the pieces construct themselves in an elegant, simple fashion. I'd much rather rewatch 21 Jump Street, though.

****/****