Die Welle | Germany | 2008 | Directed by Dennis Gansel
Logline: When a high school teacher uses an unorthodox social experiment to demonstrate autocracy to his class, the students embrace the order of unity with a fervor that soon spirals out of control.
Mr. Wegner’s (Jurgen Vogel) students are a little arrogant. When he mentions fascism they roll their eyes muttering about the boring Nazi regime. It’s school’s project week so Wegner concocts what he foresees will be a clever class experiment to invigorate the students: have them all create an order (The Wave) with its own uniform, original salute, and a united purpose. Most of the students quickly adopt the concept, especially troubled, militant-loving Tim (Frederick Lau). However Karo (Jennifer Ulrich) refuses to become involved and as she watches The Wave build she sets about organising a resistance… but it’s too late.
This is drama as demonstration and it succeeds in its disquieting task with maximum efficiency. It’s not the most cinematic in visual terms, more like a movie-for-television, but the performances are uniformly excellent, the central themes intrinsically fascinating, the narrative compelling. I loved the simple, but brilliant salute.
As The Wave’s crest begins to form, and violence begins to erupt, there is tragedy on the horizon, with damaging truths spilling forth, initially masked by the students. Even on a micro scale, a dictatorship is powerful and volatile. It is irony at its most devastating, the only question is, who will surface from the tsunami unscathed? The abrupt ending leaves an expression of shock and horror like salt on an open wound.
I read the novel by Todd Strassers (written under the pseudonym Morton Rhue) when I was a teenager and found it utterly compelling. It was based on a true incident that happened in an American high school in California in 1967. The book was subsequently developed into a short teleplay in 1981. It’s unusual for an American production to be remade by foreigners (usually vice versa), but The Wave is a superb movie.
I was reminded of another razor-sharp, socio-political film, The Edukators, also from Germany. It, too, dealt with power and conformity, chaos and disorder, using irony and tragedy to nail home the futility of its characters’ rebellious behaviour. In this precarious climate of social media minefields and “influencers”, of fascist diatribes from disturbed leaders and the insidious spread of hatred and fear mongering, The Wave could never be more immediate, more pertinent, or more accurate. It is essential viewing.