Birthmarked, written by Marc Tulin - 7 out of 10

Birthmarked, written by Marc Tulin
7 out of 10


Birthmarked has not been well received by the critics...they gave it a rating of only 44 out of 100.

Meanwhile, those who have voted on IMDB, members of the public have been a tad more generous, with 5.6 out of 10, on average.

Matthew Goode, notable in The Imitation Game, has the role of Ben Morin, while Toni Collette, another admirable artist, plays his wife, Catherine.

They have an interesting, if not revolutionary idea, which would demonstrate in practice the supremacy of nurture versus nature.
Scientists have argued for a long time over what is more important, nature or nurture.

In a classic of psychology, The Blank Slate, the legendary Steven Pinker analyzes the issue in detail.
Ben and Katherine would raise children contrary to their supposed genetic inheritance.

The project is backed by a rich man named Gertz, who arrives with a helicopter at one point.
He keeps the pressure on the family, insisting that the contract provides for their backing, but it has provisions which mean to that they stand to lose a lot if they make mistakes or do not deliver.

A climax or nadir, depending on how you look at it, is reached when Gertz presents the advanced stage where a Portugese team is in their similar experiment.
Catherine insists that this is different, they do not force changes upon the three children they raise and the methods of the competition are wrong.

The financial backer insists that there will be repercussions if they do not get their act together and speed up their research.
At one point, he calculates that in case of failure to meet expectations, the couple has to pay him in excess of one million dollars.

Another luminary of psychology is the genius Robert Cialdini who has written another quintessential work:

Influence

One of the principles of Influence explained in the masterpiece is:

Respect for authority 

In one experiment, researchers have demonstrated how effective this rule is by making participants in a this study to inflict apparent extreme pain on other people who took part in the study, obeying the instructions given by men in position of authority.
Ordinary men and women would apply high voltage current to correct mistakes made by other people, just because the rules were made that way and more importantly, because figures of authority asked for it.

What happens in Birthmarked from one stage on reminds one of that experiment and in the style, the manner of making this comedy, we can think of 

Wes Anderson and especially his The Royal Tenenbaums