NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Andrew Boone Of all the directors of the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff is the one who interests me least. That's not to say that I'm not a fan — I can think of very few filmmakers with a gift for adapting written source material on par with Schlöndorff's — but it is that very facet of his art that diminishes my interest in his work. Because he is always working from material that is not his own, his films lack the personal, artistic touch of the New German filmmakers that interest me more, such as Fassbinder or Herzog. That being said, while I don't hold him in the same esteem as some of his contemporaries, there is no doubt that Schlöndorff is a highly talented, highly intelligent filmmaker, and he has had about as much to say about German society as any other member of his movement, even if he uses largely the words of others, instead of his own.This is a complex issue, of course. Alain Resnais worked from source material, and no one would doubt the artistic or personal qualities of his work. Sometimes the choice of material, combined with the cinematic execution of that material, can achieve a personal version close to that of the medium's greatest filmmakers who worked from their own, original ideas (i.e. Ingmar Bergman or Eric Rohmer). I'm not sure I believe Schlöndorff is comparable to Resnais in that regard, but there is no question that his piercing allegorical portraits of a German society still recovering from the trauma of World War II are as profound as virtually anyone's.The four films I've seen by Schlöndorff — "Young Torless", "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", "Coup de grâce", and "The Tin Drum" — have alternated curiously in style. "Young Torless" and "Coup de grâce" utilized a formal realism (pardon the oxymoron, but I think it's appropriate) with a black-and-white aesthetic, while "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" and "The Tin Drum" were color films that operated within a predominantly classicist mode of filmmaking.To refer to "The Tin Drum" as classicism shouldn't be misconstrued to suggest that the cinematography is less impressive by technical standards. In fact, classicist films tend to be the most polished of all, but their formal and aesthetic qualities are impressive in a technical way, as opposed to an artistic one. In other words, the cinematography in a classicist film will very often be considerably well executed, but always toward the end of making the film go down as smoothly as possible for the viewer, not toward the end of being artistically expressive.It's a very important distinction, for the thing I found the most disappointing about my experience with "The Tin Drum" was how familiar it all felt. It reminded me too much of the kind of Hollywood classicism I grew up on in the '90s. Of course, "The Tin Drum" is immensely more complex, immensely more intelligent, and immensely better than virtually any of those films. Furthermore, this familiarity, in actuality, is probably to the film's credit, since it suggests that it served as inspiration for coming generations of classicist filmmakers, and likely influenced a great deal of future films (for instance, possibly, something as recent as "The Book Thief"). "The Tin Drum" also reminded me of an impressive and under-appreciated German film by Helma Sanders-Brahms, "Germany Pale Mother", which was released the next year, in 1980.Like all the films I've seen by Schlöndorff, "The Tin Drum" views very much like a novel (which is logical enough, since his films are based on novels). Both theme and symbolism are executed very much as they would be in literature, with form ultimately giving way to content. That being said, there was some vaguely surrealist imagery throughout "The Tin Drum" that definitely added a welcome element of visceral potency to the viewing experience. The film's protagonist is a young boy who, on his third birthday, just after the end of World War I, is given a toy drum by his mother. On that same day he makes a conscious decision (or what he recollects as a conscious decision) to stop growing. He is unimpressed by the adult world, and prefers to avoid it. His refusal to participate in this world is symbolized by the tin drum, which he keeps close by him, attached at the hip, for essentially the duration of the film, and when someone tries to take it away from him — when he feels threatened by the encroaching adult world around him — he beats his drum and yells in an ultra-high pitched voice that is capable of breaking any nearby glass. It is his unique defense mechanism, and his only means of protecting his tin drum (that is to say, his innocence) from the harsh world that envelops him. "The Tin Drum" is a film about social and cultural atrophy. The child with the drum is a metaphor for a German nation that had suffered petrification after the first war, and as a result, throughout the interbellum, the second world war, and, most importantly, the postwar period, it remained stuck in stasis, unable to grow or progress, like the child in the film. Naturally, as a means for dealing with life and its hardships, this is as ineffective for Germany as it is for the boy with the tin drum. One must eventually leave both the hopes and despairs of the past behind, and embrace the future, however uncertain and intimidating. This is Schlöndorff's criticism of German society. Schlöndorff (and the author of his source material, presumably) declares that it's time for Germany to wake up and move forward, at long last.I've heard so many mixed reviews about "The Tin Drum", and I think I weigh in somewhere in the middle. For me, it's a very good film, falling a bit short of a truly great one.RATING: 8.00 out of 10 stars

lasttimeisaw Books incorporated with eccentric characters and theatrical events are destined to be transcribed onto the big screen, so internationally renowned (Poland-born) German writer Günter Grass' excellent epic novel expands around 20 years charting a boy Oscar's rite-of-passage dirge, who refuses to grow up at the age of 3 and remains in his diminutive figure in Danzig during last century's abhorrent wartime. Directed by reverend German director Volker Schlöndorff, the film fairly does justice to its namesake novel, and conflates the tumultuous vagaries of peoples' mindset (German vs. Pole) refracting from Oscar's eyes and the familial turmoil inflicts on Oscar's own psyche with unstrained imagination, cinematic impact and metaphorical embodiment. From the over-pressing opening drumbeats, the tale unwinds itself in its outlandish and surreal fashion with a chirpy tone, the delivery of Oscar is seen through a grotesque view from the infant baby inside the womb, reluctantly to set foot on this world until her mother promises give him a tin drum when he will be 3, then the morally-challenging ménage à trois of the family sickens little Oscar and he arbitrarily decides to stop growing at his 3-year-old birthday (not a potent prerequisite for the blunt decision, but it is requisite for the spurs to propel the story going into its right direction). With his glass-breaking screaming superpower and the tin drum he carries all the time, it bespeaks Oscar's official entry into a rebellious, warped world traumatized by the venomous war and moral forfeiture. The abnormal two-fathers with one-mother structure has been arduously recorded, but without conspicuously verbal elaboration (even it equivocates who is Oscar's biological father), the nativity of Oscar itself stands for a kind of incestuous madness which scourges both his mother and Polish uncle, there are many self-aware sequences when the three adults balancing a harmonious co-existence in the same space while smutty fondling needs no camouflage, it is not a sexual suppression case, it is a perverted mentality which is powerful enough to engender self-destruction. Oscar is the on-looker here and compulsorily poisoned by it, the trumpet strain during his mother and uncle's tryst (while Oscar is the indirect voyeur) and the subsequent outbreak of his super-scream and church profanity highlights the abnormality has deeply-rooted in his mind, when he reaches puberty, his sexual aggression outstretches his child-like appearance, the domestic fornication has its detrimental sequel, it is heavy fodder to be adapted on big screen, thanks for child actor David Bennent's fully commitment (although it seems not so healthy for a child to forbear all the precocious physical endeavor), the film's success is greatly indebted of the cast, Bennent's child-midget hybrid mien suffices the age-range required of his character (the soda-power ecstasy scenes are both gross and erotic), a nonpareil child-performance leaves its mark in the textbook, sometimes the cruelties and inscrutability appositely exude from his doe-eyes and innocent face, which is as fierce as any malevolence could achieve. Adult actors, namely Angela Winkler (mother), Mario Adorf (father) and Daniel Olbrychski (uncle), Katharina Thalbach (as the second wife and Oscar's first love) and Berta Drews (the square skirted grandmother) are all well-chosen and convincingly adept in their respective roles, French composer Charles Aznavour has a minor role as the Jewish toy shop owner, the stout provider of Oscar's tin drums. Running against 142 minutes, the film sustains its momentum along its journey, there are plentiful interpretations of all the characters' connotations correlating the milieu in lieu of Grass' delicate autobiographical delineation. Tragedies aside, the comic relief is the sporadic humor, for example, the interruption of the Nazi ceremony with the drum beats and waltz is sublime and ridicule, also when Oscar's Italian girlfriend-of-the-same-size wanted her morning coffee during a dashed-off fleeing, one could anticipate what will ensue but the benign mockery eclipses the grim emotion arc here and in a tall-tale like this, a sense of humor is alway being appreciated.

Rodrigo Amaro A 142 minute film that seems to go way longer in its horrible and tasteless moments "The Tin Drum" fails completely in a story that seems to have a meaning but it fails on how to show it. It is a pathetic, devious, diabolical, demented, derailed, deranged, dubious, flawed, shameful, disgusting, art pretentious and other adjectives that is best not to be written here. Unfortunately in this times of technology and internet someone who disagrees of a cult or brilliant thing is called a troll or things like that. I'm not a troll, and as you're gonna see in this comments many things that can be debated over this trash film awarded in 13 awards including the Oscars, I have a complete fundament about why this film failed in so many levels.How come someone can buy the story of an obnoxious and annoying little brat named Oskar and his desire of not growing up, and instead he keeps playing a little drum disturbing everybody and when he's vexed he screams like a opera falsetto and breaks all the glasses around him, scaring people away? It is said to many viewers and reviewers that he decides to stay aged three because of mankind's awfulness and madness, but at no moment before this story with the drum little Oskar watches this crazy world, everything bad happens later with the coming of the 2nd World War and other bad things that this character makes. To say that he's innocent is just silly. He's a diabolical creature that resembles Hitler in a way, immature figures who every time things doesn't happen in the way they want they scream higher and higher, and do bad things (Oskar will be responsible for many deaths through the film). And a creature coming out of the hell because he reminds of stories of angels who felt from the sky to become powerful among humans (Oskar fells from a ladder and after that he'll no longer grow, and someone needs to explain to me since when felling from stairs makes you no longer grow? I fell from a ladder when I was a child and that didn't changed a thing in me).For those who say that "The Tin Drum" used metaphors to show the horrors of war and Oskar represents so many things well, you're all wrong. These things wasn't presented this way. What does playing a drum means? What does the spitting change means? Why this boy is so special? He's not, he's annoying, inexpressive with a dangerous look in the eye (a look that reminds of Hannibal Lecter, Alex DeLarge and actor Bud Cort) and all I could think of was that I wanted to slap him in the face and say "Grow Up!". It is a very boring film, that even with two hours and a few minutes of running time it seems to go forever, and I had to divide the film in so many parts to absorb the whole thing to find that it didn't had nothing so special except some original and shocking scenes like the eels stuck in a horse's head found at a beach (the most disgusting thing you're gonna see in a non horror film) and then Oskar's family ate those eels; the first part of the story which was a little bit interesting (the opening is fantastic telling Oskar's grandmother story). Volker Scholendorff's film disappointed me big time! I heard so many favorable things about it (but I confess that I was blindfolded in terms of knowing what the story was, I only knew few things away) including the awards this film earned. And here's a reminder, awards don't mean that much. To think that this mess won Palm D'Or at Cannes (in a tie with the amazing "Apocalypse Now") and a Foreign Film Award at the Oscars (in a year that Germany's best film was "The Marriage of Maria Braun" recognized by German critics as one of the best of that period and to think that Rainer Werner Fassbinder never was nominated) is unthinkable! It is the worst film ever awarded at the Foreign Film category. Not just this film shows how awards are almost meaningless, jewels like "E La Nave Va", "Pixote", "Vargtimmen" and all Kieslowski films are all outstanding works of art that weren't nominated for an Oscar and those films had so much more to tell, to show, to stay in our memories, and if you haven't seen them skip "The Tin Drum" and go see them! Trust me, it's all good.There's so many wrong things with this film that I cannot say which was the worst but perhaps the concerns on under age sex scenes (which caused many problems with future releases in certain countries). Nowadays this film is totally incorrect with those moments, I dare to say that Schloendorff became a phedofiliac figure in filming those things (it's not graphic, but it certainly makes you feel bothered). I haven't read the book in which this was adapted and I don't think I will, it is such a pointless and bad story that I don't wanna see it twice. Run for your life because after that you might get depressed as fast as I am now. 2/10

lastliberal Do you dismiss a movie because it is strange? Some do, and rate this film as a story about an obnoxious little boy who goes around banging a drum and breaking glass.Firstly, the performance of David Bennent as Oskar was phenomenal. As an 11 or 12 year old, he played a part from infancy to 21. Maybe he was obnoxious, but I choose to believe that he was making a powerful statement about the undesirability of growing up in a world where adults do not act very adult.Set against the backdrop of WWII, it can also be viewed as rebellion against war and fascism.Strange, sometimes evil, but nevertheless a powerful film that should be seen by all.