The Tin Drum

... a boy decides to stop physically growing and remain three years old while his mind, already developed ahead of its time, continues to mature. His life continues, with his irritating drum and equally irritating scream that shatters glass (he can be adult but also revert to being a childish toddler). He has intimate relations with (much) older women! Lots of metaphor and messaging but is it or was it ever relevant? Art for arts sake and a hint of the emperors new clothes but a film you should definitely see for no other reason than to have an opinion.

It's been a while since I've seen this German film but I am still struck by key images in the film and the overall tone set forth casually against a backdrop of the chaos of Nazi Germany's rise and fall.

I do wonder how much of my love for this film is owed to the Gunter Grass novel on which it's based It's a quirky slab of magic realism to be sure, like the film, but I have no idea how closely it hews to the original.

The performances are nuanced and striking in places. The cinematography is appropriately dreary and the editing crisp and unadorned. The centerpiece though, is the performance by the child actor at the core of the film. How much is owed to his voice-over narrative, I don't know, but the man growing inside of the still-grown little boy was handled just beautifully.

It's a disturbing and strangely uplifting movie at once. I recommend it -- especially for those who have seen only black and white view of World War II and the typically American view of our adversaries in German.

For me, this was definitely a hit-and-miss film, but luckily, most of the good things about this movie are also quite memorable. This is a weird movie, for better or for worse, but because it is so strange, there is absolutely no way that you will find this predictable. In fact, if you know little or nothing about this movie, keep it that way so that you can appreciate each odd twist when you watch it for the first time. I found the movie to be somewhat overlong, and the best parts of the story tended to be earlier in the film, but much of this picture is top-notch. I think most people would agree that love it or hate it, this is certainly a film that you won't soon forget.

Danzig in the 1920s/1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with full intellect right from his birth he decides at his third birthday not to grow up as he sees the crazy world around him at the eve of World War II.

This is very much a fantasy film. IMDb says it is a war drama, which is true enough, being set in the place and time that it is. But this is less about the war and more about Oskar, which I think makes it a fantasy film. His imagination is incredible, or perhaps more incredible is the idea that none of this is his imagination at all. His ability to alter the world around him is quite interesting.

The idea of a tin drum as a symbol of protest makes sense. It becomes even more interesting when put in the hands of a small child, protesting against life itself. Such an action is unheard of.

"That day, thinking about the grown-up world and my own future, I decided to call a halt. To stop growing then and there and remain a three-year-old, a gnome, once and for all" - Oskar Metzertath

The Tin Drum is based on Gunter Grass's highly acclaimed novel which used magic realism to capture the madness of war, and the folly of the people who made it possible. This movie only tackles the first two sections of the novel, leaving out the post-war events. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign film in 1980, and the Palm d'Or at Cannes. It was also banned in Oklahoma as "child pornography". Despite moments of brilliance, The Tin Drum left me feeling incomplete and curiously unmoved.

It is a very different kind of film from the others I saw this week, using satire and surrealism to explore people's reactions during the period from 1939 to 1945. It seems to be saying that it is all right to stop growing (that is, participating in the world) as a protest against the cynicism and corruption of the adult world. The setting for the majority of the film, Danzig (now Gdansk) is a major northern port town in Poland. Danzig was a free and independent city until September 1, 1939, when it became the first region taken by Germany at the outset of WWII. After the war, Danzig became a part of Poland again.

The Tin Drum is the story of Oskar Matzerath, a boy who grows up in Eastern Germany before and during World War II. Oskar decides the only way to protest being part of the adult world is by banging on his drum and remaining a child forever. This is his rebuttal of society and his tin drum is his protest against the mentality of his family and neighborhood, or perhaps against all passive people in Nazi Germany at that time. Oskar tries to shock the world out of its inhumanity. His life reflects Germany's struggle to free itself from its own dream of Teutonic superiority and find peace in the national soul.

David Bennent as Oskar gives an outstanding performance, creating a character that is both haunting and frightening. He looks like a little man in a child's body but his eyes are deep and have a very knowing look that seemed to be looking right through me.

Oskar is not a cute little updated version of Peter Pan. Since age three (when he was given his first tin drum), Oskar can scream with such a high pitch that he can shatter any piece of glass. He even controls his scream to the point where he can break windows on the other side of the city, or etch writing into glass. Oskar uses his ability to manipulate and control the adult world, often using vicious and cynical snide comments about the insanity around him. At one point, he disrupts a Nazi rally by changing the beat of his tin drum to the Blue Danube which the band then follows. The ensuing scene where the crowd breaks into a dance and the rain comes down leaving the Nazi soldiers bewildered is one of the best in the film.

I found the scenes where Oskar joins a midget troupe and finds loving companions of his own kind to be very tender and moving. However, the film became morally ambiguous for me when Oskar and his troupe decide to entertain the Nazi soldiers at the front lines. Schlondorff never really makes it clear what his motivations are and Oskar's actions seems to contradict his essentially anarchist protest for most of the film. The Tin Drum also contains some objectionable scenes of childhood sexuality and grotesque depictions of slithering eels being caught using a severed horse head as bait. The result, needless to say, is stomach churning.

I found The Tin Drum to be absorbing and thought provoking yet, despite moments of brilliance, for me it did not add up to a totally satisfying experience.