NETFLIX NETPICKS: ‘The Wave’ shies away from challenging questions

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Nazism is the greatest thing to happen to the movie industry; they’re damnable enough to instantly register as an irredeemable villains.

No other concept has been as malleable or flexible as the Third Reich; the cinematic National Socialists are the ultimate representatives of evil, yet boisterous enough to lend to slapstick comedy, and their randomly placed symbols add mystery to easily spice up any terrible suspense movie.

And often, when a director decides to actually take Nazis seriously, their horrific past can make for incredibly poignant cinema.

There actually isn’t a single Nazi in the entirety of “The Wave,” but their shadow is prominent enough to color the entire film with their presence.

A 2008 foreign film, with the title “Die Welle,” is a movie loosely based off an obscure classroom experiment that took place in a California classroom in the ’60s. As one of the several film adaptions of the experiment, “The Wave” transports the experiment to a suburban community in Germany, for both a stronger unity with its message, and, no doubt, increased marketability.

When rebel teacher Rainer Wenger, played by German Actor Jürgen Vogel, is asked whether he really thought  Germany would be susceptible to another Third Reich by one of his students, Wenger decides to turn his own classroom into a fascist system. He manages to create a modern version of the Nazi Party, composed entirely of gullible teenagers.

It’s almost humorous how quickly the entire school is convinced that joining a fascist organization is a perfectly great thing to do. After only two days, the majority of the students are dressed in white (the Wave’s official uniform), vandalizing the neighborhood with “Wave” symbols, bullying little kids, having drunken Wave parties and other typical adolescent fascist activities.

Most offensive is the improvised “wave” greeting, which bears a striking resemblance to the Nazi salute … imagine that.

What the movie lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with initial complexity. The movie works best as a miniature examination of a fascist state, and doesn’t shy away from finding some positive implications of such a state.

The students are almost instantly united, forming strong bonds with each other. The loners and rejects suddenly have friends and the neighborhood gang develops a sense of morality. The movie does a remarkable job of embracing all of its controversial subjects, both the positives and the obvious negatives.

Unfortunately, the movie is almost completely derailed by its out-of-nowhere, tragic, hyperbolic ending, which manages to disregard all of the movie’s building complexity, and instead ends with the almost insultingly simple message of “fascism is bad.”

Sure, that’s a perfectly acceptable message for every brainless Nazi movie that Hollywood pulls out of its recycle bin, but for a film which treated the concept so intriguingly, it feels like a waste. Clearly fascism, while still pertaining to its corruptible aspects, wasn’t entirely bad in this film.

What was poignant about the movie was the fact that it challenged the viewer to form their own conclusions on the fascist system, and ask questions about the universally negative perceptions they may have been fed.

In the end, “The Wave” decides to cower back to being art that confirms rather than art that provokes, which is a shame, because provocative is exactly what this film needed to be.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Genre: Political Drama