The Wave [NTSC]

The Wave is an Emmy awarding winning telemovie based on a high school class experiment in Palo Alto, California, USA, in 1967. History teacher, Ron Jones, sought to create an experiential demonstration on individualism versus conformity for his class in answer to a student’s question about how the German people could so embrace Nazism and claim to be unaware of the systematic persecution and killing of the Jews and other innocent targeted members of German society under the rule of Adolf Hiter. In this unflinching and powerful teleplay the questions the experiment sought to ask about fanaticism, propaganda, mass persuasion and the corruption of power are seen to succeed in their answers beyond expectation. After only a few weeks the experiment, entitled ‘The Wave’, is seen to move from a game about community feeling and healthy working discipline to a self-motivated movement with mysterious purposes and leaders of its own where opponents become enemies and life-long friends are separated and where, frighteningly, criticism is met with intimidation. While the teacher is faced with the prospect that he has lost control of his experiment and himself been caught in the momentum of the movement and his role in it he seeks to end the nightmare by confronting the students with who and what they have been supporting all this time and none are unaffected by the revelation.