The Wave (2008) (Film Review)

The Wave (2008) Another good German film! It was already great to discover: Run Lola Run (1998), Free Fall – Freier Fall (2013), In the Fade (2017), Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), Mädchen Mädchen/Girls & Sex 1 (2001) and 2 (2004), Er ist wieder da (2015)… And I think the horror film Wir sind die Nacht/We are the night (2010) was good too, but I’ve forgotten about it. Check it out again!

Max Riemelt and Jennifer Ulrich are both in at least two of these films. Max is in Freier Fall (as a homosexual) and they’re both in Wir sind die Nacht (he as a policeman and she as a vampire). I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Admittedly, it has an adolescent feel to it, given that they are the main actors. But it’s skilfully blended with the life of the teacher, his wife and his colleagues.

An excellent film, worth seeing at least once. Even if some of the scenes are irritating, you get your slap in the face at the end.

As in The Experiment (2001), whose remake is The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), you wonder how these situations can escalate so quickly. It certainly seems exaggerated, but we underestimate the anomalous, bestial and stupid side of human beings, despite all the bad things we’ve already said about them.

A film that explains how to set up a totalitarian system.We always think that we couldn’t live or relive a real dictatorship in our countries, but we don’t know how wrong we are. Whether we’re already in a hidden dictatorship without even knowing it is another debate. This is the review written by a friend: “To be shown in schools! The whole power of this disturbing film – because it is realistic – lies in the weary remark made by this student at the beginning: a dictatorship like the Third Reich could never happen again, everyone has learned their lesson, let’s move on.No way! The essential lesson has to be repeated over and over again, because human nature at its most primal always makes possible the slow mechanism that leads to totalitarian societies.

Yes, really, an intelligent film that should be shown in schools.”I also found this review here: “The original was somewhat different.The only question is whether it isn’t the right that is profiting from these adaptations. We had a right-wing Tory teacher who fought to stop many pupils starting their apprenticeships after passing their orientation course.”I don’t think he’s talking about another film, but about the basic experience.

The Wave (Die Welle) is a German film directed by Dennis Gansel and released in 2008. It is loosely based on “The Third Wave”, an experimental study of an autocratic regime conducted by history teacher Ron Jones with first-year students at Cubberley School in Palo Alto (California) during the first week of April 1967.”

My Rating