Compliance

Film (2012)

With Ann Dowd (Sandra), Dreama Walker (Becky), Pat Healy (Officer Daniels), Bill Camp (Van), Philip Ettinger (Kevin), James McCaffrey (Detective Neals), Ashlie Atkinson (Marti)

It is a routine day at a fast food place. The manager casually chats about her recent engagement. Then there is some concern about who left the freezer open and consequent worry about the availability of pickles.

But a call arrives which causes a progressively strange series of events to occur. Because of the distractions of a busy restaurant mixed with bad managerial judgement, obvious expectations of decency are overlooked. An ordinary day turns into a extraordinary one as a most difficult set of consequences unfold.

The title tells it all. What does it take for someone to comply with instructions, even if those are bad ones? Sometimes, as is the case here, it takes almost nothing at all. This well-executed, but disturbing, drama is a contained vignette about how that evolves and what are the consequences of unthinking obedience.

The curious chemistry of this film is that it gradually unfolds its focal drama in a believable way until, at a certain point, the viewer grasps the subtle transition from credibility to incredulity. That the viewer experiences the awareness before the characters do provides a shock to the organs of judgment as one continues to witness the dramatized consequences of unfounded belief.

In the early 1960s, at Yale University, a psychologist named Stanley Milgram carried out a sequence of experiments in which he tested unquestioning obedience to authoritative direction. To what extent could his subjects be induced to comply with given instructions, even when reason dictated otherwise? In the name of science, he would instruct people to do things to others that, in retrospect, seem unthinkable. But, under the constraints and expectations of authority, his subjects, far more frequently than not, followed his directives.

This dramatization is well-directed and acted. In general the characters believably convey the unbelievable in this small fast-food context suddenly writ large by manipulation. It is a heartbreaking tale told directly and effectively.

But this is not an easy film to watch.

During its difficult phase, it moves slowly and deliberately, though with psychologically jacked up energies. This telling of the tale effectively uses its deliberate and slow-paced evolution to trace its course from the ordinary to the unbelievable. But, for the viewer, the sequence can be tormentingly elongated as well as emotionally tortuous.

Suffice it to say that this is not a date movie. Do not expect to be entertained.

Though dramatized, it is based on a true story. Told starkly, it is painful to watch, but, it renders its important message effectively, and is worth seeing.

– BADMan