The Wave: contexts and key sequences

The Wave (Dennis Gansel, 2008): during a project week on autocracy at a German school, teacher Rainer Wenger turns his class into a movement called 'The Wave', with a uniform, a salute and a logo; it spreads quickly and ends in violence.
A German film based on a real classroom experiment in California in the 1960s and the novel it inspired.
Contemporary Germany and the memory of Nazism, and the boredom and privilege of the students.
Key sequences to know in detail: the second day of the project in the classroom, the night-time rampage with the logo, and the final assembly.
Cinematography and mise-en-scène: long shots of the whole class, hand-held camera among the students, the white shirts and the logo.
Editing and sound: day-of-the-week captions, cross-cutting, editing that speeds up as the movement grows, and rock music.
The few short lines of dialogue that matter most in these sequences, a few words each.
Short answers of the kind the first parts of the Section B question ask for: naming and describing a character, and explaining how a technique introduces them.
How to answer each part: the marks, and what the short identify and explain parts need as well as the extended answer, since naming a technique instead of a specific example from the film loses marks there. Practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
Quote only short lines of dialogue you're sure of, a few words at a time, and base every point on what happens in the finished film.

What you need to know