Experimenter:
The Stanley Milgram Story
(2015/Magnolia Blu-ray)/1984
(1984/Orwell/Virgin Films/Atlantic Releasing/MGM/Twilight Time
Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B Sound: B/B- Extras: C/B Films: C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The 1984
Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, is
limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last
from the links below.
The
number one thing that stops people from a better tomorrow are...
other people hell bent on power and destruction, but why? In part,
because some of the more heartless types want to use, fear, terror,
hate, division, then even murder and actual death to keep power on
the cheap, absolutely and totally. Most people don't like this, but
the ways this happens has become increasingly sinister and complex.
The following releases deal with two different looks at that
backwards situation.
Michael
Almereyda's Experimenter: The
Stanley Milgram Story
(2015) is the biopic of the social scientist (played very well here
by the underrated Peter Sarsgaard) who was so driven to find out why
the Nazis got other people to commit the genocidal atrocities they
did that he started an experiment with a twist. Get two people in a
room, explain it is an experiment, have a person hooked up to a
electric shock machine in a separate, isolated room and see if the
people in the larger outside room with Milgram would continue to hit
the shock button no matter how dangerously high the voltage would
get. In real life, he was having the persons hooked-up to the
electric not hooked up to anything, pretending to be in increasing
pain to see how far the people pushing the button(s) would continue
to do so.
At
first, his work was criticized, ignored, misunderstood and eventually
form what we hear, made illegal, but it turned out to be one of the
most important studies of authority, conformity and why people
'follow orders' no matter the consequences and apparently, too few
have grasped or understood why. Winona Ryder is interestingly cast
as his wife and the biopic side has its downsides, but more maybe put
off by the fact that Milgram starts talking directly to the audience
early on and keeps 'breaking the fourth wall' that becomes more
repetitive than it ought to be.
That
also means the film has all kinds of trouble getting started and
drags more than it should early on. Fortunately, it start to pick up
after about a half-hour and gets really good. I knew about the man
and his experiments, though I don't feel that got in the way of my
getting into the film early on. Despite its issues, this is a film
worth sitting through for all the good things it pulls off and is
worth a long, serious look. It runs 98 minutes.
Extras
includes three featurettes: a main Making Of piece, plus Designing
Experimenter
and Understanding
Stanley Milgram: An Interview with Joel Milgram.
Michael
Radford's 1984
(1984) is the fourth direct adaptation of George Orwell's book on
film, one of the most important ever written about a totalitarian
police state future back in 1948 when the author was concerned that
any so-called post-WWII progress could just slide back, disappear and
much, much worse. How right he was. Two very notable TV versions, a
radio drama version with David Niven and a British theatrical film
are the best-known previous adaptations, not to mention the endless
(and sometimes excellent films) inspired in part by the book.
John
Hurt is Winston Smith, eking out a lonely life in his job at the
falsely named Ministry Of Truth where he is constantly altering and
changing newspaper and other media information to fit the current
stances, ever-changing histories and constant new political stances
designed to fry the brains of anyone listening and keep everyone from
thinking, challenging or coming to any kind of self-realization,
gutted-out by a soulless, artless, heartless, angry, hateful, evil,
dark, empty society that talks patriotism and loyalty but is
destroying everyone and everything in its path; especially that
challenges it.
Smith
is in sickly shape, but a good guy like so many around him with
nowhere to turn. He becomes excited when he starts to fall for a
pretty young woman named Julia (Suzanna Hamilton of Tess,
Out Of Africa,
Brimstone & Treacle,
the hit TV mini-series Wish
Me Luck) who starts to
confide in him, but is she for real or setting him up for a fall? He
also meets O'Brien (an ill Richard Burton, chilling as he had ever
been in his last big screen feature film role) who talks to him, but
is a higher up Winston might want to be careful not to trust.
Touted
by many as a great film, there is so much the film gets right about
the world of the book, but more than a few things are altered and too
much of the book gets jettisoned for our own good, thus the mixed
response to it despite some good critical press and a very mixed
(some say botched) theatrical release. Cyril Cusack (Truffaut's
Fahrenheit 451), Roger Lloyd-Pack (The Go-Between, TV's
Spyder's Web, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her
Lover) and Phyllis Logan (TV's Lovejoy and Downton
Abbey) are the other familiar faces (and voices in Miss Logan's
case) amongst a cast of unknowns that make this all the more creepy.
It
could be argued that certain political interests, the kind that
stopped the original cut of Gilliam's Brazil (see the
Criterion edition reviewed elsewhere on this site) from being
released the same year, wanted this film to stay unseen, flaws or
not. Still, there are connections to Pink Floyd's The Wall
and later films like V For Vendetta would have a nod to two to
it. Hurt is fearless in his performance and to finally see the film
as intended was a mixed experience for me. At least now, like
Brazil, you can finally see it as intended... and judge for
yourself.
Extras
includes an illustrated booklet on the film including informative
text and informative Julie Kirgo essay, while the Blu-ray adds an
Isolated Music Score (more below on that one) and an Original
Theatrical Trailer. Sad there's not an audio commentary track.
Playback
performance here is not bad with the digitally shot 1080p 1.78 X 1
digital High Definition image transfer on Milgram showing some
flaws, but not in the surreal moments that scream fake (partly from
the budget, yet add to the unique feel of things) but from some shots
that don;t work as well as the best ones here. This is as good as
this is likely to look and better than most low-budget productions of
late.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on 1984
rarely shows the age of the materials used, but this is far superior
a transfer to all previous releases of the film, especially as this
is presented in the darker version intended by Radford and Director
of Photography Roger Deakins (A.S.C., B.S.C., later of Skyfall
and several Coen Brothers and Scorsese films) used the bleach bypass
method that is applied to release prints (versus leaving the silver
in the negative) that was later used on films like Fincher's Seven
(with Deluxe Labs' version of the format) and Jeunet's Alien
Resurrection
(with Technicolor's version of the format). This was always a good,
looking film that looked like the book played and felt, but in this
more darkly intended variant, it is even more visually effective and
the Blu-ray really delivers as a result.
Both
also offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless mixes with a pretty
consistent 5.1 mix on Milgram
is well mixed and presented,
managing to be very active for an often dialogue-based work. The
soundfield is more consistent and effective than more than a few
action films we've come across over the years. 1984
comes with two
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes that come down to
the music score. The first one strictly features the original music
score by Dominic Muldowney (later of the hit Sharpe's
series) that keeps the situations toned-down, unhyped and creepy in a
gutted-out way.
The
second has a bit of Muldowney's score, but adds mostly instrumentals
from a second soundtrack created by the great New Wave duo Eurythmics
(Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart) that they were hired to make not
knowing the director already had the music he wanted. A totally MTV
move from Virgin's end, the duo cut ten songs with some great vocals
by Lennon (as usual), but the film only uses mostly instrumental
parts of what become a ten track album (rarely in print) issued as
''1984
(For The Love Of Big Brother)''
that included music videos for two singles (''Sexcrime''
which is hardly heard in the film and ''Julia''
that is awkwardly stuck in the end credits) and the isolated music
score for the film on this Blu-ray is the one with Eurythmics on the
soundtrack.
Needless
to say this was a disaster (the late, great David Bowie rejected
Virgin's offer before Eurythmics signed on) and you never see Lennon
sing these songs. Still, some scenes are creepier with Eurythmics
music in it, leading one to ask if the traditional music by Muldowney
might negate the evil here at times by its score signifying that
nothing is wrong. Its something to ask. Ironically, a semi-musical
opera based on the Eurythmic songs would probably work nicely, but
Orwell himself thought those genres were not befitting of his book,
so we'll never see that either. Still, the actual album is worth
seeing out because it is up there with Savage
and Revenge
as the duo's best album works.
With
that said, both soundtracks sound fine for their age and being late
monophonic theatrical releases, but Eurythmics music (at least) was
recorded in stereo, so hearing it sounding a little muffled by
comparison to the original stereo recordings (the two Music Videos
are in stereo on the Eurythmics
Greatest Hits
DVD, long overdue for a Blu-ray upgrade) making what we get seem like
a last minute addition. Virgin should not have second-guessed
Radford, but it is a shame the 10-track album could not have been on
this Blu-ray as a lossless audio-only bonus.
To
order the 1984
limited edition Blu-rays, buy it and other great exclusives while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo