Die Welle, The Wave [Region All, NTSC]

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Gewiss gibt es noch eine ganze Reihe weiterer wirklich großartiger Beiträge aus Deutschland in den letzten Jahren, aber Die Welle hat bei mir seit der Erstsichtung einen bleibenden Eindruck hinterlassen und haute mich bei jeder weiteren Sichtung immer wieder aufs Neue um.

Karo continues her opposition to the Wave, earning the anger of many in the group, who ask her boyfriend, Marco, to do something about it. Jan Plewka wrote and recorded a song for the film, Was Dich So Verändert Hat, in both a German and English version. 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.At one time the German cinema was sometimes accused of failing to take a hard enough look at the country's Nazi past. He made the film in a way that should have a “seductive effect” on the viewers to make them interested in The Wave and by doing so show the powerful attraction such a movement can have. Why the teacher, established as an authority person, becomes a victim of his own staged role play, “remains puzzling“, the critics claim. Director Dennis Gansel seems to like movies about the power of groups and how they affect the individual. Afterwards, the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) as well as other co-producers decided to subsidize the project.

The alternate rock soundtrack, cutting and hand-held cinematography highlights and renders contagious the youthful energy of Die Welle itself. And if you broke the rules, you would get in trouble with his secret police, who were unknown to us. He made them address him as Mr Jones, stand by their desks when answering questions, and chant slogans.What is frightening is that many (though not all) of them voluntarily follow the conformity through reasoning. He cleverly manipulates his class to slap them out of apathy and disinterest with tiny minute changes which eventually builds up to a boil. The group is shown to grow closer together, and former bullies Sinan and Bomber are shown to reform, protecting Tim, the class outcast, from a pair of anarchists demanding he sell them drugs. Putting it mildly, the movie deals with a classroom experiment about autocracy which has interesting positive and negative consequences.