Another twofer “Jon watches”…
The Hangover was (apparently) the blockbuster comedy of 2009. 4 guys go on a crazy stag-do in Las Vegas, things get out of hand and hilarity ensues as the following day they try to piece together the night before the morning after. There were two highlights in the film for me – a tribute to the casino scene from Rain Man and the strange pause in otherwise fast-paced action where Ed Helms (who’s great in the US version of The Office) sings a song about tigers’ dreams. Otherwise standard buddy/road movie and quite American humour.
The Wave (or “Die Welle” because it’s a German remake of an American TV movie) however is a bit more thought-provoking. Inspired by the (disputed) true story of a sociology experiment in dictatorships getting out of hand on a school campus, the setting of this remake in Germany gives it an extra resonance. A class of kids, cynical that anything like the fascist regime of the Nazis could ever happen again in their country, are convinced by their teacher to start a movement. Over the course of the week, they elect the teacher as “fuhrer”, choose a logo, a name (The Wave”), a uniform and the movement begins to take on a life of its own as people begin to be identified as “in” or “out”.
Although the progression of the movement in the film seems a bit unlikely and the conclusion of the film is much more dramatic than the conclusion of the real events it was based on, it’s still an interesting parable about the dangers of assumed superiority and how easily we can fall into excluding tribe behaviours.
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