Billy Crudup stars as a real-life professor of psychology at Stanford who, in the early ‘70s, ran an experiment in which paid volunteers were asked to role play as either a prison guard or prisoner in a mock prison built in the basement of one school buildings. The professor and his undergrad students set up cameras and microphones to record the interaction between the “prisoners” and their “guards.” What happened went terribly wrong — as you can imagine — and the experiment had to be shut down prematurely to avoid even more harm. Even if you are already aware of this study, I think you’ll still be fascinated to watch this fictionalized account of what people with power can do to those without.
