 |
|
|
|
Tin Drum (1979)
 email this review to a friend
Movie Review by Jarrod
December 20th, 2007
|  |
'The Tin Drum' won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1979. It is based on a novel by Gunter Grass, one of the most famous of postwar German writers, who helped to develop the literary genre of magical realism, and elements of it are sure to be found in this weird and wonderful adaptation by Volker Schlondorff. On the one hand, this is a harrowing portrait of one young boy's experiences during the Nazi era; he witnesses the invasion of Poland, Kristallnacht, he is in France when D-Day occurs, and he is back in Germany when the Soviets arrive.
On the other hand, it features a variety of bizarre and unsettling scenes that just don't work, and most of them deal with sex, more specifically, odd sexual pairings that are, at least in a few cases, incestuous. Oskar Matzerath (David Bennett) decides at the age of three to stop growing. It is an act of rebellion against adult society, which he sees as duplicitous and chaotic. He incessantly bangs on the tin drum he got as a gift on his birthday, this is what he uses to vent his frustrations, and it serves as an instrument of communication, when he chooses not to speak. Now the drum banging gets on his family's nerves, and ours; it did not take me long to tire of it, but there are many moments when it dangles silently around his neck, and one cannot help but be thankful.
Oskar's mother, Agnes marries Alfred, a member of the Nazi party, who proudly attends rallies and is impatient with both his wife and with Oskar. Alfred might be Oskar's father, but it could also be Jan Bronski, Agnes's cousin, whom she is deeply in love with, and is having an affair with. Jan works at a Polish post office, and is Polish by ethnicity, which is problematic when the Germans show up, to annex Danzig and the rest of the territory awarded to Poland after WWI by the Versailles treaty. The movie displays effectively the tensions between Germans and Poles, who live side-by-side, but the former group celebrates Hitler and seeks to be part of the Reich, the latter group wants to remain Polish in an independent country.
There is also the plight of the kind Jewish toy store owner, who supplies Oskar with a new drum on a weekly basis. Agnes dies, leaving Oskar alone with Alfred, and his grandmother, until a girl by the name of Maria comes to stay with them. She provides Oskar with his first sexual encounter. There is an awkward scene in which he gives her oral sex, and this leads to actual intercourse, and then Oskar spies Maria having sex with Alfred, and she gets pregnant, but the child is most likely Oskar's, but Maria marries Alfred, and Oskar travels to France with diminutive circus performers to entertain Nazi soldiers, and falls for Roswitha, a dwarf who apparently has psychic abilities of some kind. Oskar himself can shatter glass with his high-pitched scream. 'The Tin Drum' obviously is supposed to be allegorical in many ways, with Oskar symbolizing both the aggressive and violent nature of the Nazi regime, and the will to resist it, to restore Germany to what it was prior to Hitler's ascension to power.
There is a rather joyous scene in which Oskar disrupts a Nazi rally, causing the band to start playing strands of the Blue Danube, and those in attendance begin to dance, ignoring the Nazi official who has shown up to speak to them, and this undermines the ominous atmosphere of the rally itself, and what it represents. David Bennett, from Switzerland, was 11 years old when this film was made, and he gives a riveting performance, though he often looks creepy, and demonstrates eerie and disturbing behavior, and he doesn't age convincingly, which may be the whole point, as he is supposed to be the same height at 20 that he was at 3. This is a wildly provocative and original film, of inconsistent quality, but its uniqueness sets it apart.
email this review to a friend
Comment on this Review:
Sorry, you must be a member to add comments to reviews.
Join or Login. |
 | Zombie Boy
Dec 20, 2007 3:36 PM
| |
This movie scared the f*ck out of me when I was a kid. Years later I read the book. Have you ever? It is a tough, tough read. A good third of it feels like a German geography lesson, and the rest is so creepy and pathological that I felt like I needed to take a shower after every chapter. However, I ultimately found the read to be satisfying. I tried to re-watch the movie after I read the book, but couldn't get into it. I have a tendency to not be able to separate what I read from what I'm seeing without a few years in between. I might give it another chance, now that you've reminded me about it.
Other thoughts: in the book, the glass-breaking scream was quite prominent. Is it not so in the film? Also, didn't his mother commit suicide by eating exclusively fish?
Also, wasn't there a case a few years ago, I want to say in Ohio, where the film was pronounced pornographic, and cops were showing up at people's homes to confiscate rented copies? |
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS
|
Dec 20, 2007 9:28 PM
I have not read the book, but I do know Grass, and the movie is creepy, with some very unsettling sexual scenes, which I talked about. the glass-breaking makes Oskar popular as a stage performer, and it shocks and amazes everybody who sees it.
I don't know whether his mother commits suicide or not, but she does eat a lot of fish, starting with her husband's eels. Bennett, as Oskar, looks incredibly creepy, and to see him naked and participating in sex scenes just makes matters worse.
Dec 20, 2007 9:33 PM