At first sight German socio-political thriller film The Wave initially just seems too cute, convenient and contrived. An extremely liberal German high school teacher (Jürgen Vogel) (of social sciences I gather) tries to give his students a first hand understanding of what "autocracy" means with a week-long role-play classroom simulation experiment: they get uniforms, quasi-military discipline, even a salute, whilst he, Wenger plays the autocratic leader. Well before the week is up, the "classroom experiment" takes on a life of its own, and virus-like spreads throughout the school and surrounding community, seemingly beyond Wenger's control.
Frankly to me, it just seems unbelievable. But then after digging a little deeper one finds out that the movie is quite heavily based on Ron Jones' social experiment The Third Wave. He was a Californian high school teacher of history who in 1967, constructed the original activity to help explain to his class how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. And this does give cause to not give this generally well made film, short shrift. It does have some historical basis, which clearly resonates with director Dennis Gansel and his domestic audiences, all too familiar with their country's dominant role in two World Wars.
The film is smart in that it observes the actions and reactions of a large cross-section of students to their collective role-play, rather than just a few. In doing this, it reinforces it's message of groups gaining strength through their numbers and shared behaviours. The standard of acting by the large cast is uniformly (pun intended) good and it should be added that they look like senior high school students of 17 - 18 and not 25 - 30 year olds faking it.
However I think Gansel arguably tries to tell too big a story in too little time, resulting in lack of characterisation and undeveloped and unexplored story lines. Wenger has a wife Anke, (pregnant ... again I think ... there's a pattern here), also a teacher at the school, who we hardly get to know. They seem close, yet she leaves him on the Thursday of the experiment, after ONE argument ?? Parents, as in many films dealing with high school students, just seem to be divorced from proceedings, apart from one soul telling Wenger, his son likes his class. Similarly the school staff appear to have virtually nothing to do or say about the bleedingly obvious metaphoric occurrences on campus, until it's all over and too late.
Speaking of being all over brings us to the climax and it's not spoiling to mention that the film's conclusion is far more melodramatic than that of the actual Third Wave, though fair to add, by no means beyond the bounds of credibility. It's just that once again, the final scenes of Wenger disappearing in the back of a police car raise unanswered questions of responsibility, liability, legality and ownership that the film doesn't seem all that interested in exploring, to its detriment.
Frankly to me, it just seems unbelievable. But then after digging a little deeper one finds out that the movie is quite heavily based on Ron Jones' social experiment The Third Wave. He was a Californian high school teacher of history who in 1967, constructed the original activity to help explain to his class how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. And this does give cause to not give this generally well made film, short shrift. It does have some historical basis, which clearly resonates with director Dennis Gansel and his domestic audiences, all too familiar with their country's dominant role in two World Wars.
The film is smart in that it observes the actions and reactions of a large cross-section of students to their collective role-play, rather than just a few. In doing this, it reinforces it's message of groups gaining strength through their numbers and shared behaviours. The standard of acting by the large cast is uniformly (pun intended) good and it should be added that they look like senior high school students of 17 - 18 and not 25 - 30 year olds faking it.
However I think Gansel arguably tries to tell too big a story in too little time, resulting in lack of characterisation and undeveloped and unexplored story lines. Wenger has a wife Anke, (pregnant ... again I think ... there's a pattern here), also a teacher at the school, who we hardly get to know. They seem close, yet she leaves him on the Thursday of the experiment, after ONE argument ?? Parents, as in many films dealing with high school students, just seem to be divorced from proceedings, apart from one soul telling Wenger, his son likes his class. Similarly the school staff appear to have virtually nothing to do or say about the bleedingly obvious metaphoric occurrences on campus, until it's all over and too late.
Speaking of being all over brings us to the climax and it's not spoiling to mention that the film's conclusion is far more melodramatic than that of the actual Third Wave, though fair to add, by no means beyond the bounds of credibility. It's just that once again, the final scenes of Wenger disappearing in the back of a police car raise unanswered questions of responsibility, liability, legality and ownership that the film doesn't seem all that interested in exploring, to its detriment.