For three years now, I have had the chance to come here to talk about cinema, or more precisely to talk about emotion, character, metaphor, trajectory… Trying to find an echo with reality and trying to give it a semblance of meaning. I am convinced that this is what fiction films do: to make us think about ourselves by exploiting the power of our emotions.
And that’s what Dennis Gansel must have said to himself in the early 2000s, when he saw neo-Nazi movements emerge in his country at the same time as skepticism about the idea that this ideology could one day return to power in Germany. How to deal with the subject through emotion?
Dennis Gansel decides to adapt for the cinema an experiment carried out by Ron Jones, an American teacher who, at the end of the 1960s, decided to set up a rather special workshop in his high school class. Basically, by taking up each of the attributes of an autocracy and asking the students to apply them within the course, he observes the implementation of a sort of life-size role-playing game which captures the enthusiasm of the students.
The film is called “The Wave”, it was released in 2008… and it is terrifyingly current.
Then comes the idea of a common outfit, basically a uniform (um), then a name, a logo and finally, a “mimic” gesture, that of a powerful, strong wave. , which will sweep across the country.
But the most distressing thing about it is not so much the disturbing similarities between the theory of a 2008 film and our current affairs as the accuracy of a story which makes us feel how dozens of people, from students to teachers , find their benefit in the autocratic model.
Jubilation at belonging to an exceptional group, reassurance at the idea of sharing a simple, common and unnuanced ideology, denigration of the different to justify excluding it…
The La Vague movement quickly took hold and spread, until it became out of control: for the group, we dared to do anything and, for the cause, physical violence became tolerable.
If, in the context of a school workshop, a responsible teacher can, with an order, stop the machine, it is difficult to imagine which politician, imbued with power by nature, could turn back the clock.
By force of circumstances, “The Wave” became a public utility film.
It must be shown to all those who say that we must try to see, to all those who think that history cannot repeat itself, to all those who tolerate that, little by little, our freedoms to say are being eroded. , to laugh, to tickle the forbidden.
So, on June 9, even if the weather is magnificent… don’t hesitate to vote.
