Struggling against the stream

I have recently watched two very good films (if upsetting can be synonymous with good). One was Stephen Spielberg's Amistad, based on the true story of a shipload of slaves from Sierra Leone imprisoned in the America in 1839 after they had escaped from their chains, run amok and killed most of the crew. Their plight was aggravated by a lengthy process in the law courts until they were finally vindicated in their bid for freedom, with the support of an ex-President, 74 year old John Quincy Adams, played by Anthony Hopkins in this film.

The other one was Dennis Gansel's Die Welle about which I can't stop thinking (the German adaptation of another true American story). This one deals with the terrifying ease in which a movement of mass destruction could (or can) begin, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies or the Hitlerjugend movement in the 1930s. Give restless young people a uniform, strict discipline and a sense of belonging to something that will change their world for the better and they nearly all become malleable; the unstable ones among them unfortunately may also become crazed. Die Welle has a predictably horrible ending, so don't watch it unless you're feeling strong. Two or three of the kids caught up in the wave manage to resist it. All the teenage types represented in the film were recognisable to me, because I used to be a high school teacher. When my daughter was at school she learned the proverb

Nur tote Fische schwimmen mit dem Strom.

I must admit I encouraged her not to be one of those dead fish carried along by whatever current.