Component 2b: Global Non-English Language Film Answer

A practice exam answer for Component 2b.

Identify a key location or setting in your chosen film.

One key location in Die Welle (Dennis Gansel, 2008) is the high school where the majority of the film is set.

Briefly describe the location or setting.

The high school is presented as a stereotypical German school that looks very familiar to the audience. It is built in a post-war style which is modern and industrial, and frequently scene in newer buildings. The school has limited colours, mostly white, and appears clean and new. The setting is anonymous which shows how the events in the film could happen anywhere.

Explore how ethnicity or culture is represented in one key sequence from your chosen film.

Die Welle is a contemporary film, focusing on the issues and impact of fascism; a dangerous, far-right ideology centred around control, fear and repression. It uses representation, specifically ethnicity, to explore the dangers of fascism.

In order to show the consequences of fascism in a modern setting, the director mimics Nazi Germany. Fascism became increasingly popular during the 1930s in Germany, with Hitler’s rise to power. Their beliefs allowed Hitler to create a harmful dictatorship and segregate minorities such as Jewish people, gypsies, homosexuals and disabled people as they did not he wanted to create a Volksgemeinschaft, a People’s Community. He was responsible for the Holocaust which was the genocide of European Jews and it has haunted Germany ever since. Hitler was able to do this as Germany had very little diversity. Therefore, Dennis Gansel deliberately chose to have an almost exclusively white, middle class society where the film is set.

During the final sequence of Die Welle, where all the students gather in the auditorium, there is an emphasis on the lack of ethnic diversity. The majority of the students have similar features and brown hair making it hard to distinguish them. In addition, they are all wearing the same white shirt, including Herr Wenger. They are also mostly white and German. This presents them as one homogenous unit, reflecting the Nazi Party’s supporters.

Throughout the sequence, there are many wide shots of the students all together, for example when they begin to leave the hall after Wenger’s speech about control. The shot allows the audience to see that they are all doing the same action, wearing the same clothes, mostly the same ethnicity with the same upset facial expressions. This reinforces how they are one group. However there is a change with a close-up of Marco as he verbally rebels against the movement. Marco has blonde hair and blue eyes and is representative of the Aryan Race. He contrasts the other students with his ethnicity and this highlights his individuality and his different views. His ethnicity also has a second purpose as Hitler strongly believed that Aryans were the Master Race which led to his attempts to remove those that did not conform to his ideas. This use of ethnicity reminds the audience of fascist Germany and its dangers.

To conclude, the director chose a white middle class society as it mimics Nazi Germany and helps to illustrate the consequences of fascism. Although there is some diversity in ethnicity, there is a lack of individuality.