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The Wave

4/2/2016

8 Comments

 
B+
​3.25
An unorthodox teacher in Germany puts his class through an experiment in autocracy.  It works way too well.

Directed by Dennis Gansel
Starring Jurgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Jennifer Ulrich, and Max Riemelt
Initial Review by Joe Setnor

Picture
Die Welle, or The Wave, is a 2008 film that explores the influence that can be felt when a sociopolitical ideology like fascism or nationalism affects the disenfranchised and how quickly one can find him or herself swept up in a movement.. Director Dennis Gansel uses the natural setting of a modern day German high school as the stage for his revolution. Jurgen Vogel plays the classic cinematic cool teacher, Rainer Wenger, who finds his students to be disillusioned with their current state of life. Making statements like “What are we supposed to rebel against?”, “It’s not gonna happen again,” or “We get it, Hitler sucked,” the students doubt when the suggestion of a modern day dictatorship could happen in Germany. Spurred by the student embitterment, or perhaps by his collection of The Ramones and The Clash t-shirts, Wenger puts in motion a classroom experiment that soon builds beyond his control. Built on unity, discipline, and a call to action, the young German students begin contributing to their Greater Good in a movement that becomes known as The Wave.

Gansel does a great job of quickly setting the pace for the film, illustrating how easily people might feel ostracized from society. We see characters from several socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Athlete (Marco), loner single chick (Lisa), foreigner (Sinan), bored rich kid (Kevin), bully (Bomber), smart chick dying to leave home (Karo), and of course the really fucking weird dude (Tim). Fortunately for us, Gansel doesn’t spend much time of trying to convince us who these characters are. He allows the actors to show us who they are as the story unfolds. Of particular notice is Frederick Lau’s Tim. Tim is creepy as fuck, and Lau plays the role perfectly. If you ever knew a guy growing up or in college that always took something too far, then you know Tim. Whether it’s showing up with an ass ton of sticky bud at a party or designing the class website with handguns, Tim had a certain flair for surpassing moderate expectations. Lau’s low key demeanor, coupled with some timely emotional outbursts, created a character that gave me chills. Reminded me of Paul Dano’s character Eli/Paul Sunday from There Will Be Blood.

Another character I really liked, and really it was more about how she was portrayed than anything, was Karo. A well-read and studious youth, Karo represents the opposition to her peers’ class movement. While seeming pouty at times, Jennifer Ulrich plays the role of contrarian quite well. What really makes her standout, however, is how Gansel presents her on the screen. Ulrich already standouts with eye-catching auburn hair, but throughout the film we see her dressed in red. Positioned against her white shirt adorned classmates, Karo looks the part of adversary while only simply being herself. We see this color theme carry itself into the big water polo match (did I really just write “big water polo match?) towards the end of the film when members of The Wave face off against a team dressed in red.

Before finishing, one last thing I want to make note of is the number of American references that were found in the film. I don’t consider myself naive to how the world has become more connected with the development of the Internet. However, I was certainly surprised to hear several American pop culture references like the Starbury One’s, Paris Hilton, and Tim referring to some other guys as his “homies.” On second thought, maybe I should be disapointed, rather than surprised.

I give the movie a B, and maybe even a B+ because the ending didn’t go exactly how I thought it might. It moves quickly through the plot, and overall I found the characters believable.
8 Comments
Admin
4/2/2016 02:40:42 pm

Reserved for replies to initial review

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Joe link
4/3/2016 11:44:58 am

Soooooo, this is awkward. I must have got the wrong date.
https://youtu.be/P6ekwuhHqXI

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Jon
4/5/2016 02:43:41 am

Leave it to Joe to swoop in and pick a movie I've never heard of before. Our prodigal member might be completely unpredictable in what he picks, but this is his best so far. I watched The Wave with two 2015 films in my head, The Stanford Prison Experiment (reference my Side Piece review) and Experimenter, a biopic about Stanley Milgram of the famous Milgram experiments. These kind of films about authority and the innate, lower-brain patterns that humans like to fall into are valuable, as having the self-knowledge to recognize those patterns is the best way to personally avoid them. The Wave, more than the two 2015 films, conveys that lesson while also being hugely entertaining, with its ensemble cast of teenagers ably ticking off warning signs and preconditions until they're all standing in lockstep in an assembly hall, ready for whatever comes next.

That checklist is alluded to in Herr Wenger's lectures, but it never gets fully elucidated. There's the leader, represented by Wenger as elected by the class. There's a system of discipline, which comes in the ostracizing eyes of her peers as Karo commits the cardinal sin of not wearing a white shirt. The individual must submit to the group and effectively vanish, hence the uniform, a handy signifier of who's in the group, but just as importantly, who's out of it. Social dissatisfaction is mentioned, though general boredom and lack of purpose will do in a pinch. Artificial enemies are created through the leader's frustrations, and Wenger focuses The Wave's ire on the downstairs Anarchy class that he really wanted to teach, which the students run with and apply to actual anarchists in town. Throw paeans to the greater good without ever defining what that might look like. A permissive culture, represented by Karo's useless parents, is a nice bonus as something to rebel against, from left to right instead of the usual vice versa. Lastly, a fight against a perceived elite is brought out near the end, as Wenger revels in the way his students love him and his unorthodox ways more than the staid pedagogy of his more-educated peers. Director/writer Dennis Gansel and co-writer Peter Thorwarth are constructing a thesis statement as much as making a film, and it's effective.

The Wave works as a chillingly prescient explication of authoritarianism, but Gansel succeeds on an entertainment level as well. He juggles the several kids that get significant screentime, and they each get enough scenes to make themselves recognizable. Marco's the athlete with a wide gap between his success in school and the disaster of his home life. Tim's the outsider too awkward and toadying to make friends normally, but finds purpose in a group. Karo's filled with wanderlust, ready to leave her hometown for new experiences. The tough kids mask their insecurity with bravado, inspiring the next generation of future bullies and slackers who watch them from a distance. There's also the secondary characters like the class clown who only gets laughs from himself, the underachiever, the kid who interprets leadership as volume, and the school newspaper reporter who's ready to lie as long as the Wave gets crushed. Gansel gets plenty of archetypes into his film, and though the parameters of a 2-hour film suggest that they're going to get lip service, at best, there's enough of a melding between actor and character that I was able to get a strong grasp on the social structure of this school.

It helps that Gansel has a good eye for teen behavior. I'd certainly want to hear from our members who have regular contact with this age group, but it certainly felt real to me. The beach party in particular is universal. Recklessness, drinking, couples sneaking away from the main group to make out, jokes that can easily escalate to fighting, and occasional wisps of teen profundity took me right back to Southern Indiana house parties and the bad decisions that were made there. More than that, I recognized a lot of myself in The Wave. I was certainly swept up in the anarchy of an almost-brawl at a high school basketball game, and The Wave itself is a nice stand-in for the sudden rush of self-confidence and belonging that followed after joining FIJI, putting me square in Tim's shoes sans gunplay and web design. The Wave has the potential to be only a rundown of how authoritarian movements take root, and thus a stale docudrama. Instead, it places that goal in a lived-in environment, making the end result more powerful because the viewer can recognize themselves in the characters and imagine how, in a more malleable period, they themselves could have been manipulated.

I mentioned the prescience of this film earlier, but goddamn, if something very similar isn't happening throughout this country right now. The final scene in the classroom is push-you-back-in-your-seat intense, and not too far from how I felt watching footage of the aborted Chicago Trump rally, or the prickly feeling on my nec

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Jon
4/5/2016 02:44:06 am

I mentioned the prescience of this film earlier, but goddamn, if something very similar isn't happening throughout this country right now. The final scene in the classroom is push-you-back-in-your-seat intense, and not too far from how I felt watching footage of the aborted Chicago Trump rally, or the prickly feeling on my neck when I read about Trump's Lion Guard. The students in The Wave are sick of talking about Nazi's, and are sure that nothing like that could ever happen again. There's plenty of contemporary examples to give the lie to that thinking, and The Wave is a good cinematic one to go along with them. If only it had less goddamn lens flare... B+

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Joe link
4/6/2016 10:59:19 am

SPOILERS

One of the things I didn't talk about in my review, and I noticed you didn't mention it either, is the very last scene before the credits. I thought it was interesting that they should Herr Wenger's face the way they did. His expression to me was that of regret, but not the same regret he had in the auditorium during the climatic announcement of the movie. Instead, I saw regret of willingly giving up his power as the leader of The Wave.

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Jon
4/6/2016 08:44:01 pm

His wife does call him out about loving having all eyes on him, and that's exactly what he gets in the end.

I also think that's a pretty uncharitable view of him. The sequence has a depressing feel to it because Tim went nuts, but what's just as depressing is that I think it's implied that the kids aren't going to learn the necessary lesson about groupthink and tribalism, but are going to look back on this as their crazy teacher who went off the reservation. Instead of looking inward, everyone's staring daggers at Wenger, shifting blame solely to him.

Bryan
7/5/2016 10:52:47 am

Placing all blame on Wegner and not Tim was strange to me. Where were Tim's parents?

Bryan
7/5/2016 10:51:26 am

Hey Fellas. Better late than never.

I had seen a version of The Wave in education school and this is a lot like A Class Divided in which Jane Elliott treats kids of different eye colors like it is their race at the time. The time it takes for children to turn on each other is nothing short of amazing.

The Wave tells an accurate story in a gripping way. European cinema treats the viewer as though they have some knowledge, giving us room to sort out the grey from the black and white. 80% of the movie is dialogue so one must be ready to go from start to finish when watching this one. Great choice Joe, sorry I'm late to the party. A-

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