Tin Drum, TheBased upon the classic 1959 novel by Günter Grass, Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum is the enthralling saga of Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), who tells his own life story. Oskar is no ordinary fellow; he was born with a highly developed intellect and self-awareness as well as a comprehension of the German language, and his narration begins in utero. Oskar is born in the 1920s in the Town of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland but at the time claimed by both Poland and Germany) into a rather unconventional family. He has two fathers. One (his natural father) is a Pole named Jan, who is also his uncle, and the other is Alfred, his mother's husband and a German nationalist. Oskar's first desire is to return to the womb, but the promise of a tin drum on his third birthday changes this sentiment. When the birthday and the promised drum arrive, Oskar, sickened by what he has seen of the adult world, wills himself to stop growing. He will carry his precious drum wherever he goes. The film follows him through puberty and his first sexual relationships and through the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Schlöndorff, whose specialty continues to be literary adaptations, faced a monumental challenge in bringing Grass' book to the screen, but succeeded most admirably with the assistance of screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (who co-wrote many of Buñuel's films as well as Jess Franco's astounding Diabolical Dr. Z) and Grass himself, who authored much of the film's dialog. Many of the novel's pornographic excesses had to be jettisoned, and the film leaves off at the end of WWII, whereas the book tells us more of Oskar's later life. "an absolute classics that all cinema fans should waste no time in seeing" Most interpretations of The Tin Drum posit Oskar as simply the hero of the story - the rebel who refuses adulthood and disrupts a Nazi rally by beating out on his drum a chaotic rhythm that turns the marching-band music into jazzy anarchy before it coalesces into a beautiful rendition of a Strauss waltz. However, I think that the character is really much more complex. With his drum and glass-shattering supernatural shriek (symbolic of Kristallnacht?), Oskar constantly and selfishly imposes his own little will to power, and is seen to lead about the neighbourhood kids on marches. He even, for a time, takes a job entertaining Nazi soldiers with a performing midget troupe. It is this ambiguity that makes The Tin Drum much more interesting than the tedious didacticism of so many other political films. This is definitely a film that can get one thinking, but one doesn't have to do so to enjoy it. Visually, it's perfect. From the latitudinous shots of beaches and of fields to the claustrophobic interior of a besieged post office, the photography is stunning. For devotees of the grotesque, The Tin Drum offers a soup of urine and frogs, a horrendous scene of eel-fishing with a horse's head as bait, foetuses in jars, and possibly the most bizarre method of suicide ever detailed on film. There is also great novelty to be enjoyed in the point-of-view shot of Oskar's passage out of the birth canal. I also must praise the truly brilliant performance of Bennent. Eleven years old at the time of filming, the actor portrays Oskar at three and at twenty with equally impressive verisimilitude. Maurice Jarre (Eyes Without a Face) provides another ingenious score. Umbrella Entertainment has done an exemplary restoration job on the film and included a lengthy interview with Schlöndorff as well as a truly disturbing featurette entitled Banned in Oklahoma!, which describes the prosecution of The Tin Drum as child pornography in that state. In summation: The Tin Drum is an absolute classics that all cinema fans should waste no time in seeing. If you've already seen it, waste no time in seeing it again.
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