The Wave (Germany, 2008) and Hunger (UK/Ireland, 2008): Fascism & Faeces (2/3) By Philip Wincolmlee Barnes

(1/3), (2/3), (2/3).

It works. As do other gambits, such as deciding upon a uniform (identical white shirts and blue jeans), and debating upon a name for the group ('The Wave' winning out to other suggestions, such as 'The Base' and 'The Changers': a kind of variant on the Nazi salute is also introduced).

In a school that embraces 'individuality' the adoption of uniforms, in particular, is posited as a radical act, and one reflecting The Wave's burgeoning preoccupations with kinsman-ship and discipline. Soon Wenger's whiteshirts are standing out amongst the schoolyard hierarchies, with each new recruit being expected to defend one another during confrontations with other students. One chap - formerly awkward and reserved - finds his niche and a rise in status by setting up The Wave's domain site on MySpace; similarly, another wallflower 'shines' when he designs the group's distinctive symbol. As well as the typically drunken teenage parties, The Wave are now spending their evenings spray-painting their new symbol across suburban walls, windows and vehicles. Obviously things must escalate, what with Wenger wallowing in his new cult-like status (his pregnant wife becoming increasingly concerned about his unsettling teaching techniques). The school is clearly not an establishment that goes in too much for external inspections or in-house staff meetings, judging by how swiftly (and implausibly) The Wave come to flourish from meek middle class scholars to arrogant party-crashing bovver boys. One girl rebels by refusing to wear the de rigueur white shirt, and by printing seditious anti-Wave pamphlets (for which her boyfriend - torn between love and allegiance to the party - promptly, and regrettably, smacks her in the mouth).

Most of the characters in the film are one-dimensional, as one might expect from a gaggle of self-absorbed teenagers - but even their leader, with his fast car and his love of rock music, is a rather 'off the peg' creation. The plot reaches its rather pedestrian conclusion with few surprises along the way.

One of the students in particular takes the machinations of the movement to its logical climax. Formerly a lowly 'geek', never being able to hang out with the 'Cool Kids', The Wave, for him, becomes an all-encompassing creed, which he zealously embraces - with typically fanatical results (a high school assembly siege, panic shootings, a public suicide...) By this stage Mr. Wenger is no longer quite so hip, and it is no surprise that in the final sequences he is inevitably being led away by the authorities (perhaps he would have been safer teaching Anarchism after all?), and leaving behind him a community of broken teenage lives. The plot is incredibly transparent - if you don't have time to see the film in full, the trailer would suffice - and there is a hint of newspaper-rustling 'controversy' in its subject (I can see it now: 'Kraut Director Glorifies Skinhead Dictator'). With its pulsating rock soundtrack, fast cars and fashion conscious, binge drinking bright young things, 'The Wave' - ostensibly a 'problematic' film - comes across as rather frothy and unchallenging. This is Fascism Lite, and one wouldn't be surprised if its soundtrack album were, ultimately, its most zeitgeist-like expression.

Taking a serious subject and turning it into a High School Musical is one thing. Steve McQueen's Hunger is something else altogether. Set almost exclusively (and bleakly) in Belfast's Maze Prison, Hunger studies in harrowing and unrelenting detail the eventual fate of IRA inmate Bobby Sands, who led a hunger strike, in which he and several other participants died. The film is unflinching in its depiction of institutional humiliation and violence - one vicious beating blurs bloodily into another, such are their cold regularity. Obviously this is a contentious subject, and one that is much closer to home in both time and space.

Growing up in England in the 1970's and 80's, 'The Troubles' were a kind of perpetual visual 'noise' each evening on the television news. Hunger itself lifts several speeches and broadcasts from the era, particularly those of Margaret Thatcher (whose voice still has the curdling power to make a man feel utterly impotent...) Apart from these broadcast excerpts there is very little dialogue in the film, which is perhaps understandable, as both prisoners and wardens alike are consigned to an isolated and unspoken existence of mutual - yet conflicting - despair. Instead one is presented with a series of taut tableaux. 'Tableaux' is a rather pretty word, but these scenes are anything but. The film begins with a warden leaving his suburban home for another grisly day ahead, after he obsessively scrubs his battered knuckles (any guesses why?) in a washbasin - a recurring visual motif throughout the film. Everyday one imagines that his wife nervously twitches behind her net curtains as he goes through the rigmarole of checking that his car has not been tampered with: the simple act of starting the cars' ignition is elevated to something of unspeakable tension and potential horror.

Before the hunger strikes proper the inmates have adopted a number of other anti-authoritarian strategies. Campaigning to be granted the status of Political Prisoners (as opposed to mere 'common criminals') many of the men refuse to wear standard ward uniforms. Thus most are given rough-hewn blankets to swaddle themselves in which, presumably, is a demoralising institutional technique to break the protesting spirit.

Continued .... Next Page (3/3)

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