Jen and I went to see an interesting movie last night, "Die Welle," ("The Wave").
The story is based on actual events that happened in the late 60's in a Californian High School. Students were learning about the 3rd Reich and posed the question,"How could the people of Germany not have known what was happening?" The teacher, Ron Jones, could not answer this question, but decided to conduct an experiment with his students. He began building an autocratic state in his classroom where discipline was used to control the students. The students responded so well to the experiment that it spread throughout the school and became known as "The Third Wave." After only 5 days Mr. Jones had to end the experiment because it had gotten out of control - students who would not join the Third Wave were being discriminated against and even beaten up. The author Morton Rhue wrote a book based on these events and the story seems to have been written and acted (in film and theater) in various eras.
I very much enjoyed this German production and encourage you to see it, if it comes out in the US. There was an American film which came out in 1981 which would also surely be interesting. I enjoyed this one so much because they used the original story, but set it in 2008 to relate to today's world. It was also quite interesting to see the different races and groups which exist here in Germany coming together through the experiment. It very clearly had good sides, but the bad ones were too overshadowing.
For those interested, here is the film link and where I got most of the history:
2 comments:
Michelle, that movie sounds very interesting! I don't recall ever hearing about this event and am definitely intrigued after reading your description of it. I really hope they release it here. If not, hopefully we can get it on DVD in the next couple of months.
Thanks for the great review!
We're always looking for good movie recommendations. However, getting to the theater is not too common, so we'll have to wait for the DVD.
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