Tin Drum, The
Tin Drum, The
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Synopsis

The 1979 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film. The Tin Drum is a masterpiece of dazzling exuberance and originality adapted from the novel by Gunter Grass. The film is a stunning parable of modern society in violent transition narrated by a unique hero for our times--Oskar, a boy who decides at three not to grow any older. IN German with English subtitles. Volker Schlondorff---West Germany---1979---142 min.

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  | Lewis#4

Oskar Matzerath, a three-year-old living in the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) in 1924, observes the foolishness, both romantic and political, of his elders and decides that he will simply cease to grow. Retaining his three-year-old’s stature, the precocious Oskar continues to develop intellectually through two decades of goose-stepping imbecility, using his tin drum (a constant companion) and his piercing, crystal-shattering voice to register his dissatisfaction with the ways of the adult world. In this adaptation of Günter Grass’s 1959 novel, an absurdist mix of Bildungsroman and fantasy-allegory, Oskar is, on the one hand, a moral barometer taking the measure of a world gone mad and, on the other, a petulant brat who must have his way (and occasionally does real harm). It was director Volker Schlöndorff’s good fortune to be able to place at the center of his film David Bennent, an undersized twelve-year-old who can go from cherubic to demonic in a blink. The only awkward scenes for Bennent (who has had a distinguished, post-Tin Drum theatrical career) are those with the genuine adult little people whom he encounters at a traveling circus. Here he must play a diminutive adult interacting with other diminutive adults (and even enjoying a romance with one of them), and this simply doesn’t work. The look of this film is interesting, sometimes beautiful, as in the somber, Millet-like opening and closing shots. For many of the interior shots, the camera hovers at a child’s-eye level. Other highlights: the recreation of pre-World War II Danzig (using a pinch of Danzig and a tablespoon of Zagreb), the staging of the Danzig Post Office siege, the sad face of Angela Winkler, and the very sad face of Charles Aznevour. A worthwhile, ambitious, thought-provoking film, which brought Schlöndorff an international reputation (as the novel did for Grass).

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