Tell me a story

Viewed on February 2, 2013 via Netflix DVD

The events that transpire in Compliance are so infuriatingly unbelievable that if you didn’t know the movie was based on a true story, you’d probably shout “Oh come on!” at your TV and then stop watching it. I’ve heard that that was a fairly common reaction when it was screened at theaters. It’s just that the characters make decisions that you cannot believe real people would make, but the ugly truth is this movie was based on real life events. And that’s what makes this movie so fascinating, one of the most fascinating movies I’ve ever seen.

All right, so what’s it about? Sandra (played by Ann Dowd) is the manager at a fast food restaurant. At the start of the movie, she’s experiencing one of the craziest days of the year: someone left the freezer open over night, causing her to lose about $1,500 in spoiled food, they don’t have enough bacon to make it through the day (and as her supplier tells her, “You’re fucked without bacon”), she’s short-staffed, and she is also expecting a quality control person to be visiting the restaurant to perform an evaluation. So when she gets a call from an Officer Daniels stating that her cashier stole money from a customer earlier in the day, Sandra isn’t thinking with all her faculties, and she makes some huge mistakes.

The blonde in question is Becky (played by Dreama Walker). She seems to be in her early twenties (though in real life she was in her late teens, which makes a big difference), and when Sandra calls her into the back office at Officer Daniels’ request, it begins what will be the most torturous experience in Becky’s life. As you can see from the trailer, Officer Daniels convinces Sandra to give Becky a strip search. And all I’ll say about the rest of the plot is that the strip search is the just the beginning.

You really won’t believe the actions that happen in this movie, but you can research it yourself after you see it. You’ll probably want to anyway. I had to. I watched interviews with the people involved, I watched some of the footage that was captured from the security cameras at the McDonalds (which is where the story took place in real life), and I even read up on the Milgram psychological experiments which measures how willing people are to follow authority figures even when they were causing another person pain (you can see the relation I’m sure).

I find it amazing that people will do horrible things to other people if they think a genuine authority figure is the one instructing them. Milgram had two theories as to the reason, the first being that when a person doesn’t have the ability or expertise to make a decision, they will leave the decision making to someone more capable. The second theory was that if a person sees their self as an instrument for carrying out somebody else’s wishes, then he or she is not culpable for his or her own actions, making compliance easier, which probably also explains why in wartimes seemingly decent people can do some really atrocious things. Still when I put myself in Sandra’s or even Becky’s position I can’t imagine doing anything they did. I guess I’ll never really know until it happens to me though.

Going into this film I knew it was based on true events, and I’d heard that knowing that didn’t make the movie any less frustrating. In fact I think the movie is more frustrating and puzzling than the real life story. The thing about real life is that if a person does something, whether you understand their motivations or not, it happened and you just have to accept it. When watching a movie, we’re aware that a person has scripted the entire thing, so when a character does something that doesn’t make sense, we’re more likely to say that the character is poorly developed or that the writing isn’t true to the character. Movies tend to offer us characters whose motivations are fairly easy to detect. If we’re paying attention we can pick up on the characters’ internal logic so even when they make a decision that surprises us, we understand the reasoning behind it. It’s hard to understand the logic behind some of the characters’ decisions in Compliance, unless we accept Milgram’s theories.

Don’t mistake my frustration with the film for dislike. This was a thoroughly enjoyable film, and I whole heartedly recommend it. The only major issue I had with it was that the real Becky was a high school senior, and in the movie she seems at least college-aged, maybe post-college. I think if they had placed the character in high school it would have better conveyed her naiveté and maybe explained her willingness to endure the horrors she did. (See there I go again looking for clearer motivations.) But that is really a small hurdle to get over in the scope of the entire movie. So what are you waiting for? As I write this, Compliance is streaming on Netflix. Go. Go. Go!

My Rating

Resources:
(I advise seeing the movie before you check out the following)

– ABC News: Restaurant Shift Turns Into Nightmare

– Wikipedia: Strip Search Prank Call Scam

– Wikipedia: Milgram Experiment

– ABC Primetime Live show including an interview with Donna Summers and security camera footage:

– ABC Primetime Live show on the Milgram Experiment: