Three Christs

In a Michigan hospital in the fifties, the psychologist Alan Stone sets up a strange experiment: bring together three patients who each believe they are Christ and make them talk to each other. The aim is to see what a delusion does when confronted. Jon Avnet adapted the study Milton Rokeach actually conducted; Rokeach later wrote that it had not been ethical. Richard Gere plays the doctor, with Peter Dinklage, Bradley Whitford and Walton Goggins as the three patients. Its best perception concerns the doctor's own need: he wants a result more than he wants to help them, and he notices this late. The register is at times too soft. Who it is for: viewers who like true psychiatric cases and performance-driven drama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a hard interrogation of the period's treatments.