Review #395: 'The Wave' (2008)

Punk high school teacher Rainer Wagner (Jurgen Vogel) draws autocracy in project week, and decides to teach his students about dictatorship and how Nazi Germany manipulated the population. He encourages his students to create a club, that they later name 'The Wave', that promotes equality. He establishes himself as their leader and dictator by demanding the students stand up when they are to speak, and refer to him as Herr Wagner rather than Rainer, and also re-arranges the seating by placing the children with good grades with those who are underachieving. Soon enough, the students become heavily involved in the project, creating a logo and holding members-only parties and rallies, and Rainer finds his grip slipping on his students, as The Wave starts to spiral out of control.

Inspired by history teacher Ron Jones' 1967 social experiment called The Third Wave, the film portrays how the masses can easily be manipulated into group thinking, in modern Germany who think the idea of history repeating itself as ridiculous. What starts out as an innocent club soon turns into a fascist regime, with non-members being victimised and segregated, in an obvious parallel to the way the S.S. used threatening tactics to anyone they believe to be against the Nazi Party. The film is very intriguing in this sense, in the same way as Oliver Hirschbiegel's thrilling Das Experiment (2001) showed how we can be tricked into playing social roles, but I felt the film went a bit too far towards the end and became somewhat unbelievable. But the performances are solid (especially by Vogel) and the film is well-scripted and moves at a fast pace, so it is a pity it loses its grip at the climax. A solid film that should be watched by anyone interested in social and political thinking.


Directed by: Dennis Gansel
Starring: Jürgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt, Jennifer Ulrich
Country: Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie