It is hardly surprising that two of the best known social experiments have, in recent years, found their way onto German movie screens; contemplating the corruptibility of human kind must, after all, be preferable to believing those who live east of the Rhine are irrevocably evil. Like Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Das Experiment, which took inspiration from the 1971 Stanford prison simulation, The Wave transplants a chilling demonstration of conformity into a contemporary European setting.
‘The Third Wave’, as it was known, started in a Californian High School as part of a sophister history project. One Monday morning in 1967, a right-on teacher named Ron Jones decided to show his hippie-minded students how Hitler got started. He began with catchy slogans and subtle tirades on the strength found in unity. By Thursday, the movement had taken on a sinister life of its own and the entire experiment was called to a halt.
Dennis Gansel, a grown up Gen-X director who is advantageously separated from his Nazi Youth ancestry by the guts of a century and radical left wing parents, has traversed this uncomfortable territory before. Before The Fall, his 2004 breakthrough, is typical of a new kind of German Nazi flick, one that does not flinch from depicting how attractive the Third Reich was for ordinary punters. The Wave offers a logical extension of that argument beyond the context of the ‘30s and ‘40s.
Standing in for Ron Jones, we find Herr Wenger (Jürgen Vogel), a teacher who listens to the Ramones, wears Clash t-shirts and whose mailbox is adorned with a Fuck Bush sticker. His ‘Wave’, formed to demonstrate the lure of trashing free will, begins with New Age breathing exercises and lessons in etiquette and good citizenship. Everyone soon assumes their roles within the system. Here we find the outsider kid who takes it so seriously we’re pretty certain he’ll wig out during the final act. Over there we find the foxy left wing firebrands, who realise, long before their mentor does, that something has gone extremely awry with this particular homework assignment.
Structurally, Herr Gansel’s film never forgets it is a teaching discourse. The characters and situations exist primarily as convenient cyphers for various aspects of life under a burgeoning dictatorship, not as actors in a properly sophisticated drama.
But if we often feel as though we’re being battered repeatedly by a CSPE textbook, that’s precisely how the director wants it. And rather apt in the circumstances.