THE WAVE (Die Welle)

Cert: 15, 101 min
Release: 2008
Country: Germany (with English subtitles)
Monday 1st December 8:15p.m. Reel Cinema, Andover 

Director:  Dennis Gansel

Cast:  Christiane Paul, Elyas M'Barek, Frederick Lau, Jennifer Ulrich,
Jurgen Vogel, Max Riemelt

The director’s father was a “1968 anarchist”, whereas his grandfather had been a supporter of Adolf Hitler. Hardly surprising, then, that Gansel would explore recent German history.

Saying that it would be a mistake to imagine that a Nazi-style dictatorship could never happen again, Gansel has taken the true story of events in a Californian high school 40 years ago and transferred them to modern-day Berlin, illustrating how dictatorships are born. 

For the school’s Class project week, teacher Rainer Wenger is given the subject of Autocracy. With the class undecided as to whether Nazism could ever rise again, Wenger sets up an experiment. Strict discipline is introduced – and embraced by the students. From simple beginnings, a movement is born. Students enthusiastically work on the trappings of the movement: uniforms, insignia, banners, a salute and so on. The step from feeling part of an exclusive group to looking down on those outside is a short one. The movement grows.

The development of the story isn’t exactly unpredictable, but the film doesn’t preach. Instead, it is content to let us make up our own minds. We might even be persuaded by some of the central tenets of an order- or discipline-based regime. Even if we’re not, we begin to understand how these things happen.

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 THE WAVE (Die Welle)

[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!]

The Wave is on an experiment carried out in a California high school in 1967.
  For a week-long project, teacher Ron Jones was assigned “Autocracy” as a topic, and set up an experiment. With the Vietnam conflict and other uncertainties as a backdrop, Jones led his students into believing that a new national political party was being established. He led the class into establishing a new sense of discipline and order. They established slogans, uniforms, membership cards and a salute. They gave themselves specific roles and positions within their organisation. The movement was called the Third Wave after the surfers’ tenet that the third one is always the biggest.
   The group grew in popularity and membership. Members started to look down on those outside the group, and reacted to criticism with strong and aggressive behaviour. They even started policing each other.
   Without the benefit of today’s access to worldwide news, it was easy for the students to believe what they were told. And when the experiment was ended as the assignment drew to a close, they did not know how to react. One of them, Mark Hancock, says "We were in a state of shock; there were kids crying. He wound that class up as tight as a drum." Jones himself, who was consultant to this film, thinks that the improvisation met the students’ need for answers in anxious times. “I became intrigued by it myself,” he says. “I discovered I liked the order and the control."
   Partly ashamed by the way they had so enthusiastically embraced the ideas, the story was buried by the participants for five years, until a former pupil bumped into Jones and used the old salute. This prompted Jones to write about the experiment. This in turn led to an Emmy-winning TV movie in 1981, also called The Wave.
   Another outcome is that Jones has been approached by TV companies (including a British one) wanting to replicate versions of his experiment in a reality-show context. Manipulating people in this way, Jones suggests, is evidence of our capacity for the kind of potentially malevolent group dynamics he was trying to spotlight 40 years ago. He now plays in a San Francisco punk band.

Director Dennis Gansel has taken the story and set it in a modern-day Berlin suburb. A class of undisciplined students is bored and needs inspiration. Their history teacher, Rainer Wenger, seems equally unenthusiastic about the Project Week assignment they have been given:  Nazism. German teenagers get enough of this already.
   Wenger persists. Could it happen again? The students think not. Challenging their certainty, Wenger leads them into discussing the trappings of a movement. Far from rebelling, the students get stuck in. Soon, they have devised a uniform, insignia, salute and banners, and eagerly spy on and intimidate schoolmates. The step from feeling part of an exclusive group to looking down on those outside is a short one: if you’re not in, you’re most definitely out.
   The movement swells to more than 200 members who, on the last day, flock to a mass meeting in the school hall. Wenger addresses the group, trying to establish what they’d really learned. The realisation that the movement was never more than a class project leads to despair and disaster. It has all gone too far.

Both the original project and Gansel’s version take place in white, middle-class suburbs. There is little obvious class or racial tension, no deprivation or clear need for struggle. Autocracy can arise even in the most comfortable corners.
   Gansel says that it would be a mistake to imagine that a Nazi-style dictatorship could never happen again.  Indeed, he went as far as to change the story’s ending when he found that the cast were getting too swept up in the movement explored by the film, and that young audiences were giving the salute at test screenings.
   "They thought it was cool and iconic.” He explained. “The Wave is about creating a community and I believe that's still appealing. There is a strong urge today for an idea that is bigger than yourself. Not necessarily fascism; it could be, say, the Green movement."

The pace of this film is spot on. We meet the characters, we get a real sense of their environment, and we go with them as they start with the little things. Wearing black trousers and white T shirts, using a small salute, and daubing slogans are small things, aren’t they? At this point, the ideology is less than threatening. The improved discipline, student-driven teamwork, and enhancement of self-respect all seem admirable in their way, and it isn’t difficult to see the benefits of a group structure.
   The story moves in a straight line and much of it is seems as predictable as the characters are stereotypical: Hollyoaks for the Fascisti. This is no bad thing. If the students are easily recognisable, it means that we already know them. If they can feel steady progress, why shouldn’t we? But once out of the classroom and into the streets and homes, it changes. There’s a potential for menace even when things are nearly normal.

The Wave doesn’t preach, but it does ask you to think. It entertains and it informs. It looks good and sounds good. It does what good films do.

Hans van Well

[Reviewer’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Film Club]