The Wave is an amazing little gem of a movie. A friend of mine suggested we go see it…
A German movie about autocracy (dictatorship)? Sure, sign me up. There’s just one thing that would make this movie better… set it on a German U-boat during WWII. Alas, we can’t have every German movie on a U-boat like my favorite Das Boot.
The premise of the movie is quite simple – take a group of high-school students, dress them uniformly, drill them, and voila, you end up with a true brown (black) shirt movement from 1930s (a.k.a. Fascism). The movie is based on a book that is based on a true story that happened in California, not Germany. The moral of the story is that it could happen anywhere with the right ingredients.
In terms of filmmaking, the movie is very solid. I could imagine it done with an even smaller budget in true Dogma style, without losing much of its appeal. It’s definitely worth checking out.
There’s a lot going on with the story these days, in particular with the original experiment that Die Welle is based on.
The main informational website is http://www.thewavehome.com
(managed by original students)
and the new Indie documentary of the original experiment with interviews of original students and the teacher has just come out, called “Lesson Plan.”
http://www.lessonplanmovie.com