THE WAVE

Original title

Die Welle

Year

2008

Duration

110 minutes

Country

Germany 

Director

Dennis Gansel 

Script

Dennis Gansel, Peter Thorwarth (Novela: Todd Strasser)

Music

Heiko Maile

Photography

Torsten Breuer

Cast

Jürgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Jennifer Ulrich, Max Riemelt, Christiane Paul, Elyas M'Barek, Jacob Matschenz, Cristina Do Rego, Maximilian Mauff, Maximilian Vollmar, Ferdinand Schmidt-Modrow, Tim Oliver Schultz, Amelie Kiefer, Fabian Preger, Odine Johne

Producer

Constantin Film Produktion / Rat Pack Filmproduktion / Medienfonds GFP

Genre

Drama (based on a true story). Teaching. Schools and Universities. Adolescence. Sects. 

SYNOPSIS 

Everything starts when the teacher Rainer Wegner decides to try an experiment with his students, with the objective to explain them the functioning of a totalitarian regime, and to demonstrate them how easily is to manipulate multitudes.

First of all, everything goes well. But a few days later the teacher loses the control of the situation, and students start to do things without consulting with him: they paint posters, create a logo, subdue the rest of the high school, etc.

Finally, one of the students tells the teacher everything that is happening, but it is too late to stop it. The teacher ends in prison, one of the students shoots another with a pistol, just before committing suicide.  

CHARACTERS 

- RAINER: he is the ideologist of the project. He likes to be respected and listened by his students, and he also likes to see them working in groups, etc. But this project does not work as he thought. When he tries to stop it, it is too late. 

- TIM: this boy has a lot of familiar problems, and he feels out of place in class. When "The Wave" starts, he can feel for the first time integrated in society. But he takes it to heart and he commits suicide. 

- MARCO: he plays water polo. At the beggining of the film he supports the project of the teacher, and he want to be part of it. But later he realizes that is too agressive and radical. Moreover, he does not want to split up with his girfriend, Karo, who disapproves what he is doing. Because of this, at the end of the film he tries to break with the group. 

- KARO: Marco's girlfriend. Since the beggining she disagrees with the project invented by the teacher, and throughout the whole movie she tries to stop it. 

WHY DOES THE EXPERIMENT FAIL?

I think that the principal cause because the experiment fails is that students forget they are doing an experiment. Some of them take the experiment out of context and radicalize it too. Only two students in the class are able to realize the risks they are taking. The other students are unaware of the danger of the situation, and they are carried along by peer group pressure. 

WHAT DOES THE EXPERIMENT DEMONSTRATE?

First of all, I think that the experiment wants to demonstrate how malleable man can be. Firstly, students do not believe that a moviment like fascism can exist again, but after starting the experiment they begin to exclude from the grup all those who do not think like them. Therefore they are creating an ideology similar to fascism. 

Secondly, it makes us think about the strenght of peer group pressure. In the film, there are some characters that feel alone in class, isolated, out of plae, etc., but when they are in the group of "The Wave" they feel more confident. This demonstrates our capacity to do whatever that makes us be part of a group. We need to feel accepted by the others.  

Moreover, the experiment is a proof that, although our intentions are good, we do not always get the results we want.