Die Welle (Dennis Gansel, 2008)

The Wave, based on an American novel of the same name, in turn loosely based on a classroom experiment in California in the '60s, spans a week at a high school in a German Everytown during which an unorthodox political history teacher sets out to illustrate the workings of dictatorship in practice through a class project. What begins as a game to his students inevitably turns sour as they get drunk with the power imbued by their new-found sense of unity.
Does it have to be set in Germany? No, but it probably works better than it would in another context: not for the cliched reason that Germans should be seen, even now, as being more disposed to a weakness for seeking leadership and strength in numbers than others, but rather because, as we see from the students' wearied attitudes to the Nazi question at the start of the film, no other nation has been so bombarded with didactic warnings about history repeating itself. Hence an overall jadedness with the issue, which breeds a vulnerability to it.
Gansel's film is a mixed bag: the characters are mostly stock, with the usual high school film stereotypes (the wide-eyed jock, the lefty activist, the rich kid, the stoner skaters, the sociopathic geek) somewhat railroaded by a script that is more interested in its polemic. The degeneration of norms within a mere 5-day timespan also rings untrue. Nevertheless, performances are strong and the end resonates.

6/10