In this recycled review, I spend a lot of time complaining about Tim Burton recycling material...("...the nerve!")
Speaking of nerves and things, this was written at the time of the film's exhumation....
Recycled Material From the Grave or "I Can Fix This..."
Really, it's a little soon for Tim Burton to be re-making one of his own films—albeit his first live-action short for Disney. One worries that maybe he's run out of ideas, or that he's simply doing what he's always done—take a property and combine it with that goofy blend of the kinky and ghoulish that he has made his own...it's just that this time the property is his...and he's already made it his own once. Maybe, he looked at this product of his younger self with limited resources and thought "I can do better. I can do more." Or along the lines of young Victor Frankenstein, he looked at it his earlier creation and vowed "I can fix this."
At the time of the live-action short, Disney looked at the product of their young animator...and promptly dumped it...only acknowledging it when Burton became an A-list director (with some studio hesitancy) with the first "Batman" film.*Now, Disney is crowing about its brand new Burton movie, and one can only imagine the wry smile that must produce for the director. It was natural for Disney to want an expansion—they owned the property—and although this new version ofFrankenweeniehas a lot of (dare I say) re-animation of material, it did give Burton a chance to give it a little more depth and play around without the inhibitions of live action.
I say inhibitions rather than limitations because the differences are exhibited in a weird and rather contrary way, given that the film is done with puppet figures: emotion. The character of Sparky exhibits a far greater depth of moods than a trained pit-bull terrier could exhibit in live action, not only in its darker moments, but especially in moments of joy—the animation of the dog running elicits fond feelings immediately, as the puppet is rarely touching the ground in motion, not unlike Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" kidswho hover over the ground in transit. And although the human figures are Burton cyphers (resembling the human character designs of his first film Vincent) they are still soulful, their eyes expressing more emotions than their faces will betray.
Given that the subject matter is about a mad scientist of a little boy who runs the parallel path of his literary namesake to re-animate his beloved dog, killed in a traffic mishap, there's a lot of room for high emotion there, and far more than in the motivations of the original story.
But, Burton takes it further and makes it more than about young Victor. Taking pages from The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman Returns, he stages the denouement at a city festival that brings all parties together in one spot, the communal experience gone awry.
Seems that Victor's work has attracted a lot of attention among his classmates, and as there's a science fair going on, all the kid's are doing the same thing—literally, the same thing, bringing to life their dead pets with very mixed results, and providing Burton a chance to explore other species of monster movies (and recreating scenes from them) than just the one, paying tribute to each, just as he does by including a scene from friend Christopher Lee's turn as "Dracula."
Like Victor's experiment, this is a labor of love as Burton—just as with the earlier short—resurrects the movies he loved as a kid, long-buried memories that never really leave, and have influenced Burton throughout his career. It's a fun, resonant electrification of his earlier work, with just enough fresh in it to make it worth the effort and bring it back to new life in leeched black-and-white (which Burton always manages to make look sumptuous). Now, if only we could see something wholly new and original from him, that would be some experiment.
The original Frankenweenie
Brad Bird's "Family Dog" (from Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories") based on animation designs by Tim Burton
* It did find it's way to Paul Reubens who'd been trying to find a suitable director to collaborate on his long-in-the planning Pee-Wee Herman movie he'd been dreaming about. Frankenweenie convinced him to contact Burton.
Beetlejuice was an unlikely hit when it debutedaway back in 1988. Director Tim Burton was virtually unknown. He'd made two shorts, one called Vincent and the other, his live-action version of Frankenweenie, the second of which convinced Paul Reubens to give him the directing job on Pee-wee's Big Adventure. That one had made money and when Burton became friends with writers Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson after directing their modern re-telling of "The Jar" for the television anthology re-boot "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", they began collaborating on McDowell and Wilson's original screenplay "Beetlejuice". As closely identified as he is with the film, it did not start as an original idea—Burton had already been working on his next film, Batman with writer Sam Hamm, but the project hadn't gotten out of the Warner Brothers' development Hell, when the McDowell-Wilson script found its way to him.
Beetlejuice changed everything. Burton's bizarre approach to the material garnered a large audience, and seeing the success that the young director had made of such a strange concept, Warner was more than happy to finance Batman. And Tim Burton became, if not a household name, a guarantor of original concepts and oddly-tilted projects that audiences fancied.
A sequel to Beetlejuice has always been talked about...but Burton has always been busy. For the longest time, it had been going through a series of concepts from many Burton collaborators under such titles as "Beetlejuice Goes to Hell," "Beetlejuice in Love" and..."Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian" (I think that might have been a joke-title for the press) but Burton always seemed to find something that attracted him more. Now, a whopping 36 years—and several Batmen—later, it's finally manifested itself in theaters.
A bit of personal back-story here: I must confess that the first Beetlejuice movie...at first viewing...I wasn't that crazy about. Brilliantly designed, yes. Ingenious and funny, sure. Keaton, terrific...if used a bit sparingly. All the elements were there, but it just seemed a bit wanting. Some of it might be attributed to Alec Baldwin's performance—this was before he became "Alec Baldwin"—which was a little bland, almost protective of himself as an actor. But, the big thing is I got the impression that the movie wasn't exactly true to its own rules...like if something needed to be resolved, Burton would just come up with something and excuse it as "it'll work" rather than making sense. This was before I started to appreciate Burton as Burton.*With a couple more films, I learned to let Burton be Burton and my reservations blew away like dust that obscures a snow-globe. Oh, he could still do a less than satisfying film, but a fully-engaged Burton film is a joy to behold...and experience.
Which is why I foundBeetlejuice Beetlejuicesuch a breath of fresh air, albeit with a creepily crypt-like funk. One recalls that when Burton does a sequel—he's only done one, Batman Returns, far different in tone than the first one—he approaches it the same way he does one of his re-makes...as a "re-imagining." Yes, there will be call-backs(and there are plenty in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), but, for the most part, Burton is vampire-staking new ground, and here he's doing it with such wild abandon that one turns giddy with each new development...however grisly or grotesque.
The story has three arcs that will progress and come together at the end.
1) It's 36 years later than the events of the first film and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the girl who could "see dead people," is the host of a cable-TV show called "Ghost House" where she visits haunted places. She has the experience. She is currently having the experience of seeing flashing visions of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton)—well, he isn't "flashing" per se, but one wouldn't put it past him—which is making her more neurotic than normal and has her reaching for her anti-anxiety pills, much against the wishes of her producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux). Lydia is a mess, anyway. Her surrogate ghost-family, the Maitlands have "found a loophole" and moved on. Her husband, Richard (Santiago Cabrera) has disappeared exploring the Amazon, and her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), in boarding school, hates her, blaming her for driving her father away and because she considers her mother's work with the supernatural "a sham." Lydia's mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) is now a popular artist with a gallery opening pending, when she learns that husband Charles () has died and she insists that the three generations of women return to their old home in Winter River for a proper memorial.
2) Betelgeuse is now a functionary in Afterlife Management, running a boiler-room of shrunken-head employees and still holding a torch for Lydia, when he is called off the job by "ghost detective" Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), B-movie action star in his past life, who warns him that his past wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), a soul-sucking witch who murdered him during the Black Plague has somehow managed to reassemble herself—Betelgeuse hacked her into parts after discovering she'd poisoned him (it was the Plague Years, after all)—and is now seeking him out for revenge. Betelgeuse knows he won't out-run her for long and knows his only real salvation is to try to get back into the mortal world.
3) Astrid, on break from her boarding school (which she hates) and with her Mother (whom she hates) and step-grandmother (whom she tolerates) and her Mother's boyfriend (whom she despises), does just enough family-duty to go through with Charles' service, but then lights out on her bicycle where, by accident, she meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who feels like as much of an outcast as she does. They plan to meet up for Hallowe'en. Jeremy is the first decent boy she's met...but then, she hasn't had much experience with boys. If she wasn't keeping it a secret her mother or grandmother might tell her that boys are only after one thing...
That's a lot of story, and there are a lot of characters, and a lot of detail and the movie sails by with hardly a bump. In the meantime, Burton is having fun mixing things up with stop-motion animation (the sequence is ingenious on so many levels), or by telling the story of Betelgeuse and Delores' relationship in the style of a Mario Bavagiallo film, in black and white and with Italian narration, and his parade of recently deceaseds all visually communicate how they died, usually in ways that would make them win Darwin Awards.
One of those awards would surely be deserving of someone who kept rambling on and on talking about how they loved everything about the movie and proceeded to tell you everything they loved about the movie and spoiling it. Those were just a couple of things that made me grin and grimace throughout the movie and there's so much more that should be left unsaid for full appreciation. But, leave it to say that Burton is working on all cylinders and with at least the same amount of joy he did with the first film...nearly four decades ago.
This time, I had no quibbles, from the first sequence to the last, each with their in-jokes and sense of the macabre to their giddy reveling in kitsch—a key component to understanding most of Tim Burton's work—all topped off with another happily galumphing Danny Elfman score. If I could grin any more, the top of my head would have rolled back like a PEZ dispenser.
And laugh? I thought I'd die.
* I had a REAL problem with Edward Scissorhands when the titular character stabbed his arch-nemesis to death, destroying the innocence of the character. The thing is...that was kind of the point. The "real world" of suburbia finally broke him, and it's why he HAS to go back to The Inventor's castle in self-exile. In practical terms, the death is unresolved—the police should be showing up at the castle-door (maybe with torches and pitch-forks), but—in story-terms, Edward's already punishing himself...in his own prison.
Burton tells stories with dream-logic. Real-world issues do not apply.
"The Red Shoes Diaries" or "Losing Control (She-Bop, Sh'Bop, Sh'Bop)"
Black Swanis a head-trip, alright. Darren Aronofsky's latest of his films exploring the limits of obsession—the pursuit of it, the need for it, and its cost—never travels too far afield from the whirling dermis-dome of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman—brave). A "girly-girl" to the nth degree, Nina still lives with Mom (Barbara Hershey—even braver) in a 12 year old's bedroom, blushes in embarrassment when sex is brought up, and still pursues the girl's version of what the Bible calls "childish things"—prima ballerina.
And like the dervishes who spin to achieve some form of religious ecstasy, she is looking for an epiphany in her pursuit of perfection. Be careful what you wish for.
From the loges, it all looks so elegant, but on stage it's a board-thumping, sinew-stretching, bone-popping athletic performance, practiced to such an extent to be made to seem easy. The body takes a beating. Callouses form, bones snap, nails bear the brunt of the quest for perfection. It's beautiful but brutal. And, as any athlete will tell you, it's as much a challenge of the mind, as well. There's the discipline to do the job unerringly, but there's also physical acting, as well. Synapses fire to work the muscles, but those same synapses are under assault psychologically, fraying from the pressures on-stage and backstage.
For Nina, it's an obsession for perfection.*Her director (Vincent Cassel) knows she can nail the star-part of the pure white swan in "Swan Lake," but the vixenish back swan is more of a challenge. "Perfection isn't about control. It's also about letting go." For the more sensuous black swan, Nina is at a loss, so bottled up in being perfect, she's afraid to open up from the discipline. "Live a little," he suggests, telling her to touch herself.
As if there isn't enough self-abuse going on.
The pressures start getting to her. Given to obsessively scratching her shoulder, she develops a rash at her shoulder blades. Toe-nails split. Her fingernails turn bloody (at one point she tears off a length of finger skin down to the second knuckle). She seems to be coming apart at the seams, and if she can't bear up, she'll be replaced like the departing prima Beth McIntyre (Winona Ryder**). The number one candidate for the job is Lily (Mila Kunis), an earthy dancer from San Francisco, who typifies the black swan, and who becomes something of a paranoid obsession to Ninafrom their first glance. By the time Nina actually pulls the bud of a black feather out of her scraped-raw shoulder, it's pretty apparent Nina has crossed a line and, like an exquisite ballet, fantasy has disguised reality.
It's scary, almost a horror film. Aronofsky keeps the film taught, his restless camera taking a position directly behind Nina's head, clod-hopping behind her, seeing what she sees, agitatedly cutting out the dull parts. Then it spins as she does, picking out the neck-snapping details that Nina sees in the blur. Fully a quarter of the film involves a reflective surface (even a shot of Nina looking at her mother's obsessive portraits of her—of course, Mom is trying to "get" daughter perfect, too), even if those mirrors don't always behave well.
And, as he did with The Fountain, Aronofsky proves himself a master of subtle sound-work, using extreme fields to further enhance the disorientation the audience feels inside Nina's head (more than once, I looked to see if there was someone behind me in the theater), and altering reality—making a toe-nail clipper sound like a guillotine, making you feel the gristle of toe-bones as they snap.
And he gets the best out of Portman. It's a technically tough performance—she's in every scene, and her face, typically beautiful in serenity, is constricted in constant struggle, disrupting the planes of her face into a worried mask that seldom shows her at her best, veering into moments of hysteria.
For the sacrifice of art, she's not pretty, nor is the film, despite its subject matter and occasional forays into the dance-fantasy. How can it be? We're not sitting comfortably in the audience, but perched precariously in Nina's whirling head, dizzy with the spin, that even braking to a screeching stop, continues the momentum in our own minds long afterwards
* I don't want to get too far into this, although I'm sure Aronofsky and his scripters (Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John J. McLaughlin) probably did. There's something called the "Black Swan Theory," about large, unexpected events and their shock-wave effect on human psyches that must come to grips with it. What's most relevant about it are the ten principles the theory's author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, concocts to create a more predictable world:
What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become Too Big to Fail.
People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
Do not let someone making an "incentive" bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.
Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to "restore confidence".
Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.
Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible "expert" advice for their retirement.
Make an omelette with the broken eggs.
Hmmm. Some of this relates. ** A glance at the four lead actresses, Portman, Ryder, Kunis, Hershey, and most of the supporting ballerinas reveals that they are all similar-looking women—a long line of raven-haired ingenues, like their own organic mirror images.
Looking for Richard(Al Pacino, 1996) Early on, actor Al Pacino is waiting in the wings, waiting to go on-stage in a small theater. He peeks through the curtain, only to see William Shakespeare sitting (alone) in the middle of the theater, waiting to see his performance. He lets loose one long crudity of indeterminate origin (Anglo Saxon? Flemish? Germanic?) that the Bard never used in one his plays, comedy or tragedy (although he did skirt around it quite a bit). It's as good a view as any of actor intimidation, looking at a text and being confronted with the mystery of what the author might have meant and of that same author's passing judgment on any possible misunderstanding. Plus, Shakespeare was a director...and actor. And his voice (being dead and all) is silent. Except for what is there on the page. The actor is left, very much alone on-stage.
Looking for Richard is a unique film. A documentary (and barely that—a docu-drama? docu-tragedy? vanity project?), not a staged play, of Al Pacino "finding his way" through Shakespeare's "Richard III," which, as Pacino's friend and co-conspirator Frederick Kimball describes it, is "Shakespeare's most popular play" (as it's the most often produced).
The movie is, at once, enormously ego-driven—it's all about Al and how cutely eccentric he is—but it is also just as much a display of humility and quite generous in its company-feel. For as much as Pacino is ever-present in the film, he is rarely alone and almost never in the position of authority—he's always the inquisitor. One rarely sees actors seeking, rehearsing "in the raw" (usually it's staged to make the process seem seamless), but Looking for Richard frequently has impassioned table-reads in which subtext is debated, and that is interesting. Pacino is enthusiastic about exploring the complexities of the play, especially in regards to the other characters involved in this supposedly "one-man play", and he gives a lot of screen-time to not only the actors picked for his own iteration (like Alec Baldwin, Kevin Conway, Winona Ryder, Penelope Allen, Estelle Parsons and especially Kevin Spacey), but also interviews with other actors, in interviews, renowned for their mastery of the Bard: John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, James Earl Jones, Rosemary Harris, Viveca Lindfors, Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline.
That's a cast bigger than most Shakespeare plays—with maybe the exception of "Julius Caesar"—and corralling them is a tough endeavor for the movie's stated task, which is to make Shakespeare accessible to the man on the street (and the "man on the street" interviews are fascinating, veering between the extraordinarily articulate to the kid who might like it if it were a first-person shooter). But, the way to make Shakespeare accessible is for it to be performed well. And so the fallback becomes the thespian exploration of character and relationships, breaking it down, getting inside the skin of the character through their expressed words. 'Twas ever thus.
With all the advice and words of wisdom, the one who comes off the worst is Pacino. He's excellent in most scenes playing Richard, but once he ascends the throne, he drops the measured wiliness too far, affecting a smirking blitheness while giving orders of "head-offing," that seems to indicate he has forgotten all the history that has gotten him to where he's sitting, and with little regard to the impression that would leave with any Lancaster that might want to snuff out that son of York. Bad playing on both the actor's and the character's part. One should be leavening the other...if it is to be true with what has gone before. Especially with the exceptional way Pacino has played the part up to that point.
But, overall, despite that hump, the interpretations are a success, lending understanding to the feud between the Yorks and Lancasters, an empire-defining feud that has long since past in its importance, other than in providing lessons on the dangers of acquisitiveness. Shakespeare still speaks to us 400 years past his passing, bringing us cautionary tales that still resonate and are given new breath by whatever voice utters those words. It doesn't matter what voice, in what era—the plays the thing wherein they capture our conscience.
Please Continue, Teacher or The Man in the Glass Booth I think, by now, just about everyone has seen, in one form or another, the film Stanley Milgram made about his controversial 1962 "Obedience Study" at Yale (if not, it is provided below), even if they don't remember the name, the implications are embedded in people's consciousnesses. In it, Milgram, a clinical psychologist and the son of immigrants who'd escaped the Nazis, wanted to see just how far someone would go in following orders—at the time of the studies, Adolph Eichmann had been on trial and executed for war-crimes and the phrase "I was only following orders" was at the top of everyone's mind and conscience. He was teaching at Yale (Milgram, not Eichmann) which played a part in the experiment as the college was prestigious enough for people to take it seriously and even be intimidated by it a bit. Two men are brought into a room with the clinician in a gray lab coat (Milgram chose gray, so "the face" of the experiment wouldn't be associated with medicine). By lot, one of the subjects is chosen as "the teacher" and the other, "the learner" and they're told that it's an experiment for learning under pressure. "Mr. Learner" is led into a sound-proof room and briefly given a list to memorize and is then attached to electrodes.
"The Teacher" is then led into the larger test-room, with a large machine with a bank of switches. He's informed that he must ask the learner over two-way radio to choose the correct answer of the word-pairs from a choice of four possibilities and must administer an electric shock for every wrong answer, and, just to demonstrate, he is given a mild electric shock as an example. Each wrong answer the "learner" gives is met with a higher value of electric shock from mild to extremely strong. If the learner continues to give wrong answers, the highest value of electric shock is repeated until the man in the room gets them all right.
All right. Of course, the experiment has nothing to do with learning, it has everything to do with if "the teacher" will go on with the experiment, delivering higher and more painful shocks to the man in the room. "That" man is a plant—an actor who plays the part, even questioning whether the shocks will affect his heart condition. He never receives any shocks. He has a tape recorder which will play designated reactions to the shocks from annoyed "Ow's" to screams of pain and howls of protest. "The learner" is not being tested. "The teacher" is.
And what Milgram and his researchers want to know from their subjects is: how far will they go? The subjects are made extremely uncomfortable by the job they have to do, and the reactions from the next room create a conflict—do the job or not? If they protest (and they inevitably do) Dr. Gray-Coat has a script that merely says "Please continue, Teacher." The more protests from the "teacher," the more insistent the clinician becomes, telling the "teacher" "once the experiment's begun, you must continue to the end" or "you have no choice, teacher." What Milgram wanted to see was—at what point will the "teacher" stop administering shocks? And why? At what point will the REAL test subject stop following orders for Man, for Science, for Yale?
What Milgram discovered was (no pun intended) shocking: in the baseline experiment—the one everybody uses as the example, although Milgram's results altered as he altered the conditions of the experiment—66% of the test subjects took the experiment all the way to the end. Despite the recorded pleas for help and screams of pain. Despite the real subjects' misgivings and protests, fully two-thirds of the them continued right to the "extremely dangerous" shocks, even after the protests stopped, and the only thing coming from the booth was deathly silence. 66%. So much for our "better angels." So much for "free will." The study showed a fragile weakness in human-kind—we, singularly, are more than susceptible to a mob mentality. In our self-preservation, or selfishness, we will give up any morality, any higher teaching, any nobility or philosophy and just "go with the crowd" when confronted with greater numbers or authority. The "little voice in our head" can be shouted down by volume or magnitude. Given that, "what's a Heaven for?"
It's depressing and alarming. And significant. The study has been controversial (as the film points out) because it is, after all, based on a lie. No one's getting shocked. No one's getting hurt. The study is not about what the subjects of the study are being told it is. And they are the ones being tested, not the man in the booth. Also, the authority of the clinician is fabricated—he merely states that the test must go on and that once started, it cannot be interrupted, the most specious of lies. And the subject—the real subject—gets caught in an ethical quandary of doing the right thing: do I stop for the man in the booth, or do I keep going because I'm being told to? None of us have to pull a switch on a guy, but how often does your boss say to you: "do it or you get canned?" For the sake of self-preservation—maybe getting ahead—you do it, and file the misgivings in the back of the junk-drawer. You put away the conflict with a drink after work or a weekend on the boat that conflict bought you. As they say in Spotlight: "I was just doing my job!" To which the bitter reply is: "Yeah, you and everybody else."
The podcast "Radiolab" (highly recommended, by the way) did a segment called "Who's Bad?" about the nature of evil and the Milgram study figures significantly in the last half of it. In that, Alex Halgram makes the case that maybe these people aren't "evil" but they continue because they think they're doing something significant for science. They see it as a good thing. So, that proves they're not "bad people." Right? Great. The SS thought they were doing something significant for Germany and the "White Race." So, they rounded up the folks who didn't meet that criteria, segregating them from the rest of Society, all the better to surreptitiously put them on trains where they could be summarily eliminated. 6 million of them. But, their intentions were good, thinking of the country, right? So, that doesn't make them "bad people," does it?
OF COURSE, IT DOES! The test subjects for the Milgram study might bot be evil. They might not be bad. But their better natures are certainly over-ridden by an expedient concern that replaces their instinct to not harm a fellow human being. There's a big difference between Yale and Auschwitz, and the conflicts of the subjects are certainly part and parcel of the results, but still 66% took it all the way to the end.
So, 66%. Something to think about while you're in rush-hour traffic, or dealing with any sort of bureaucracy, or when considering giving someone your social security number. This would all be dry, dry stuff (as in the video below) if not for the telling of the tale. Writer-director Michael Almereyda focuses on the man who came up with the experiment, the implications of it and the effect the results and the criticism of the study had on him. Held together by a low-key bravura (if there can be such a thing) performance by Peter Sarsgaard, who is on-screen for most of the film, and spends a good percentage of it breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, describing his experiment and its ramifications, his motivations, and inner thoughts on the journey.
That running commentary to us is just a part of the unusual (and frequently amusing) approach Almereyda takes to the material, as he plays with the film form, letting go of reality, or, if you will, going against the dictates of traditional film-making techniques demanding recreations that are realistic. For instance, frequently, he'll stage a scene in front of a deliberately phony backdrop that isn't even in color (really, why should it be?) and might be a deliberate statement about going against convention. It's surprising, but Almereyda does other clever things, as well.
For instance, there's a couple scenes where Milgram is ambling down a Yale corridor and there is the usual mattering of extras passing through the shot, ignoring that Milgram is talking directly to us (already a break against picturing reality) when an elephant comes walking down the corridor behind him, impossible to ignore, an obvious "elephant in the room."
Or, in a post-study interview with some subjects, three women who participated start talking about their reactions to the test, sipping coffee out of styrofoam cups. Their reactions differ slightly, but when one strongly objects that she was duped, the others fall in line and begin to sip simultaneously. Duped, maybe, but the point about influence lingers.
There's a less obvious one. Once Milgram and his wife Sasha (played by Winona Ryder) start to have kids, their son appears in a couple scenes—in green make-up. Odd. But, if that's perplexing, check out what he's wearing: a black turtle-neck and suit—he's dressed as Frankenstein, indicating (once the controversy over the experiment settles in) that Milgram has created a monster. Now, that's funny. And the point is made without words.
This is not only good film-making, it is fun film-making that livens up a film about a serious subject, while keeping on parallel tracks about the significance of the man and his work while keeping it entertaining. Experimenter is getting a limited release—it will blaze no trails at the box-office (in fact, it only played for one night at a local art-house here) and, actually, is available online already. It is, itself, experimental, but is considerable food for thought, whether one is concerned with good ethics or good film-making.
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