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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 18 September 2008

Rainer Wenger (Jurgen Vogel) takes his class down an experimental and dangerous road in German film The Wave

Tide turns for pupils in class act

THE WAVE
Directed by Dennis Gansel
Certificate 15

WHAT induces a nation to mass hysteria? How could the white and blue-collar workers of Germany – the dentists, mechanics, newspaper sellers, railway workers – allow the Nazis to take such a grip of their country and commit mass murder?
It’s a question that is important to continue to ask to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and a question that is at the root of this marvellous, dark German thriller.
The Wave tells the story of a week-long class project in a progressive German comprehensive school. Popular social science tutor Rainer Wenger (Jurgen Vogel) wants to take the end-of-term course in anarchism – as he tells the principal, he lived in a squat for years and knows all about taking to the streets each May Day.
However, he is beaten to it by a straight-lipped and unsuitable colleague and instead is given the apparently odious task of taking a class on autocracy. He knows how to work his pupils and decides to conduct an experiment on what makes a group of individuals become a pack.
He wants to explain how totalitarian regimes come into being – but his role-playing classes, which begin with harmless discussions on cohesion within communities, soon take on a sinister twist.
Based on a popular fictional book used in German schools, The Wave also has its roots in a real-life experiment conducted in Palo Alto, California. A history teacher was taking a lesson on Nazism and realised he could not adequately answer a pupil’s question: “How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people?”
The teacher decided to instigate a strict regime of discipline in his class and, to his surprise, his students reacted enthusiastically towards it. So much so that soon the whole school became involved and anyone showing dissent was ostracised. It got out of hand and the teacher had to rein in his charges.
The re-telling of this story works for a number of reasons. First, the screenplay and script are paced so that it is all too believable – there are no dud notes. The players involved – and it’s quite a roster with a class of students – create characters you care about. The lead in Jurgen Vogel is spellbinding at the front of the class, particularly as he begins to realise what he has unleashed.
This brilliantly directed film had me ignoring the autumn sunshine and wrapping my coat tight around my middle as I left the cinema. The Wave will haunt you long after the credits roll.

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