Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs an experiment in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to a strange strapped into a chair in another room. Experimenter invites us into the mind of a man who struck a lasting nerve in pop culture and the scientific community.

Peter Sarsgaard has an unnerving knack for bringing brilliant, somewhat vain intellectuals to life—and his high-wire performance as a daring sociologist in Experimenter is no exception. Between actor, character, and director Michael Almereyda, cleverness is off the charts in this unorthodox biopic.