WHERE'S THE DRAMA?

In 1967, Ron Jones, a teacher at a high school in Palo Alto, California, devised a "social experiment" among his students which he called "The Third Wave"; the idea was to show how easily support for a quasi-fascist/totalitarian ideology could spread. This experiment inspired the book The Wave by Morton Rhue, and this in turn served as the basis for this film, which transfers the action from America in the 1960s to modern Germany. More controversially (particularly so for a German film), The Wave also suggests that although fascism may have evil consequences, the impulses which lead people to support it are not always in themselves evil. The Wave is (unlike Hitler's) an inclusive fascism; membership of the group is open to all, regardless of race, religion or social class. The only students outside the group are those who have deliberately chosen to exclude themselves. Three of its keenest members are Sinan, a member of Germany's Turkish minority, Dennis, who is mocked as an "Ossi" (East German), and Tim, hitherto an insecure, unpopular outsider who has finally found a group in which he feels welcome and at home, which is why his eventual disillusionment causes him to react so violently.  Die Welle can therefore be seen as a film about the failure of good intentions, as idealistic young students are tricked into supporting something quasi-fascist, just as many Germans, Italians, Russians and Chinese in the twenties and thirties joined genuine totalitarian movements for what they thought were idealistic reasons only to find that they had become part of something oppressive and evil. Similarly, Wenger's experiment, begun with the best of intentions, ends in tragedy. This is an excellent movie.

Posted by Eug on January 22, 2012 at 5:17 PM

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