Craig Zobel’s grungy and claustrophobic docudrama “Compliance,” the most harrowing American film of the year so far, explores the degree to which people will collude in the persecution of a vulnerable party when ordered to do so by a voice of authority. The findings aren’t good. Ordinary citizens lacking in healthy skepticism and the ability to take moral responsibility are, Zobel indicates, if not in themselves evil, then fully capable of being manipulated to inflict physical or psychological pain on others to the extent that they deprive them of their civil rights.
Loaded with metaphoric resonance — do we axiomatically do what law enforcers and governments tell us? — “Compliance” is analogous to the late Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” social psychology experiments. Beginning in 1961, Milgram had volunteer “teachers” administer what they believed were electric shocks to “learners” who falsely claimed to have heart conditions (they were paid actors playing a part) when they gave wrong answers to questions.
Milgram reported in 1963 that 65 percent (26 out of 40) of the volunteers delivered the fictitious 450-volt shock. “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process,” he added in 1974. “Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”
So it is with Sandra (Ann Dowd) and her handful of passive employers at a suburban Ohio burger joint in “Compliance.” When she receives a phone call from “Officer Daniels” (Pat Healy), alleging that one of her counter staff, Becky (Dreama Walker), has stolen money from a customer, Sandra obeys his command that she sequester the girl in a back room and personally strip-search her.
Remote-controlled by Daniels, actually a perverted prank caller, Becky remains naked under an apron for virtually the rest of the film, seen in this state by male and female coworkers alike. Although one young male colleague objects to being asked to guard her on ethical grounds he can’t articulate, it’s a grizzled maintenance man, the lone figure of integrity, who irately refuses to comply with Daniels.
Becky is young, blond, and pretty, the reason she is targeted, of course; Sandra is middle-aged and plain. Before their tormentor calls, the two women have a conversation in which Becky reveals she has received a request for a revealing cell phone snap from an admirer. Sandra competitively remarks that her cloddish boyfriend, Van (Bill Camp), knows how to turn her on with sext messages. Dowd is revelatory as the puffed-up, gullible manager.
Thus, there is an element of unconscious self-destructiveness and perhaps vengeance in Sandra’s agreeing to the fake cop’s suggestion that Van come over to watch Becky, since the other workers are busy with the Friday night trade. It’s a decision that leads inexorably to Van’s sexual violation of Becky — a crime that comes as no surprise to the audience, but is no less chilling when it occurs.
It is not only Sandra and her team who are implicated in Van’s act and Becky’s degradation. Audience members who find themselves looking at Becky’s exposed breasts without feeling uncomfortable might well wonder if they are complicit in Daniels’s obscene game. At times, that game stretches credibility, but writer-director Zobel ends the film with a title acknowledging that 70 similar cases have been reported in 30 states. (“Compliance” is closely based on an incident at a McDonald’s in Mt. Washington, Kentucky, in April 2004; the man charged with the malicious prank call was acquitted.)
Although “Compliance” for the most part handles its sexual politics discreetly (criticized as exploitative though it was by some viewers at the Sundance Film Festival in January), Becky’s admission to a detective in the film’s last few minutes that “I just knew it was going to happen” raises eyebrows. It implies that Becky has been negligent about her own welfare, or that Daniels’s hectoring, insinuating voice over the phone has led her to feel that she deserved her mistreatment. Why doesn’t she scream or kick or bite? The larger point Zobel is making, presumably, is that corrupt authority, as in a fascist state, can fool nearly all of the people all of the time.
A version of this review appears in the July/August issue of Modern Painters