Die Welle, The Wave [Region All, NTSC]

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I don't agree with many comments that say the movie let's you thinking why the wave is bad, even if it has positive effects on community members at times. The director is able to delve deeply into the minds of the various characters and explain their behaviour and position in the society that is created. The notion of new fascism or totalitarianism is kinda scary and it was a bit uncomfortable to see how people react when they are in a mob or a group. He was a Californian high school teacher of history who in 1967, constructed the original activity to help explain to his class how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

Unless, by some unlikely series of coincidences, you have missed out on the whole story and need a (relatively) quick fix, I would miss out on this one. The only students outside the group are those who have deliberately chosen to exclude themselves from it. The film is narrated from the perspective of a third person, although particular scenes provide individual characters' subjective points of view. To summarize the plot, Rainer Wenger (Jürgen Vogel) is selected in his department to teach autocracy for one week, to his disapproval. It will make you think and possibly reassess the important question, as asked in the film, if Autocracy can rear its head again.I had some problems with his previous outing "Napola" (wrote a review on IMDb), but in "Die Welle" he gets most things right. According to Dennis Gansel, German students have grown tired of the topic concerning the Third Reich. The members of The Wave begin spray-painting their logo around town at night, having parties where only Wave members are allowed to attend, and ostracizing and tormenting anyone not in their group. The Wave ("Die Welle") though looks at the issue from a different angle, examining how it can arise and entrance those it touches, and in the process makes the whole issue look fresh again.

And the students fell in love with this idea, because it works, they're helping each other, everyone is united for one cause. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account—for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages ( example), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads! Gansel himself had felt an oversaturation during his schooldays and had developed an emotional connection to this chapter of German history only after watching the film Schindler's List. The 1981 film's ending, where there is no violence and the teacher is not arrested, is much tamer than the ending of Die Welle and is more accurate to the real-world events that inspired both films. This is the type of over-achieving person who engages in all kind of projects, plans ahead for the future and does everything to succeed in life.Even though I am a senior citizen, I identified with these kids and could imagine myself, in all innocence, being led astray just by wanting to be part of a group that accepted and protected me. If you had any doubts or questions or thoughts of resistance, you couldn't tell anyone because you would get in trouble. Helmed by director Dennis Gansel, film is unforgiving in depicting the youth as a generation without anything to rebel about but loneliness, making them sensitive to any sort of illusion of belonging. But the fascist values imposed on them taking effect from day one, to me, appears far too unrealistic. Gansel justifies the drastic end with the necessity of shocking the audience after the length of the film, of providing a counter-statement and of taking up a stance.

Except for the very last scenes the events are never too much over the top and every single event by itself could find some sympathy in the viewer. From the first scene on, the sympathetic guy tears the audience on his side”, [19] it was reported about Jürgen Vogel, he was transforming the moral ambiguity of his figure into a “mercurial energy”. He filled the hour with convincing talk about how discipline and community were positive," says Neel. The 2-Disc DVD comes with 83 minutes of interesting extras: 23 and a half minutes of good deleted/extended scenes(clearly removed purely for pacing), a well-made 22 minute making of, 17 and a half minutes of cast/crew interviews, a 6 and a half minute alternate ending, 6 minutes of funny, at times hilarious, outtakes, a 4 minute music video Empty Trash, 3 and a half minute class visit, 2 minute concert video Digitalism, 1 and a half minutes with Ron Jones(who did the original experiment that this is based upon), and half a minute of storyboard-to-film comparison. Utterly consumed by despair, Tim abruptly shoots himself in the head, preferring to commit suicide than go on living without the movement.The teacher then decides to show the children what it's like to live in an autocracy, and sets up a simple experiment in class. Well before the week is up, the "classroom experiment" takes on a life of its own, and virus-like spreads throughout the school and surrounding community, seemingly beyond Wenger's control.

a b Tobias Kniebe: Der Faschist in uns Archived 26 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12. His students bore at the thought of talking about the Nazi's again and are convinced a fascist rise to power would no longer be possible in contemporary Germany. These are the only things that are not completely predictable, and that do not tend to point a finger at the audience, trying to teach them.His film, however, was made on the premise that people felt immune to the possibility of a repetition of history as a result of the intensive study of National Socialism and its mechanisms. Die Welle (The Wave) is truly a brilliant tale that lures viewers into its cleverly developed plot just as Herr Wenger lures his unsuspecting students into a sense of fascism. The film's ending is more extreme, but plausible in today's society, according to both Jones and his students. There's also some gunplay at the end and a murder attempt in a swimming pool which we can be sure never really took place.