The Wave

29/09/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

Last week, a German friend of mine was forced to engage in conversation with a woman who brought Hitler into the dialogue an impressively rapid 30 seconds after meeting him. My outrage at what I considered a completely inappropriate small talk topic was matched only by his utter lack of shock. Apparently, Germans in Britain suffer regularly from what they rather generously refer to as our "Don't mention the war" syndrome.
 
However, as new film The Wave shows, mention of the war back in the motherland is a lot less frequent, the dramatic result of which is shown in this absolutely shocking story of a classroom experiment gone badly wrong. When taking a project class called "Autocracy", one student complains "Yeah yeah, we get it. The Nazis sucked. Can we move on?"
 
The class begins a project, led by their unconventional teacher, which becomes known as The Wave. And what begins with the election of a leader, and the agreement to put up their hands before speaking, soon descends into a Nazi style classroom, with those who refuse to wear the white shirt uniform, or do the special salute, find themselves not only ostracized, but also persecuted for not acquiescing to the power of the wave.

The modern political allegory combines brilliantly with very realistic scenes of school life – jealousy, bullying, teenage love. And though some might find the ending a little over the top, (though the same was also said in disbelief by some during the war when told tales of camps and mass murders), the real question remains – is the idea of modern totalitarianism terrifying because it's so easy to achieve? Whatever the answer, there's no doubt that it takes a filmmaker as brave as director Dennis Gansel to transpose what was originally an American short story, back onto his own culture, where the question mark has hung over their heads for over fifty years.
 
Rarely have I watched a film able to provoke such fear and disbelief, whilst also musing on what a fantastic South Park episode it would make. Which would certainly go some way to answering the question: "Can we move on?"
 
The Wave is out now.