Rating: 
Summary: Sick
Review: "The Tin Drum" is a disgusting movie that shows the seamier sides of life in pre-war Danzig, Germany. None of the characters in this movie are particularly admirable or likable, save Markus the toy merchant. Even the protagonist Oskar is a debauched character in his own right as evidenced by his frequent sexual trysts with his sixteen-year-old baby sitter. Not to mention having an adulterous affair with his best friend's wife. Some critics have said that "The Tin Drum" is a funny film. Having seen this film a few times, I can say there's nothing funny about it. If anything, it's sick and disturbing. This movie really deserves a zero.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely mesmerizing
Review: 5 stars to the film and 4 1/2 stars to the DVD transfer! Kino Video did a superb job in producing the DVD version (not perfect but way, way better than most transfers). The DVD is a must have for film buffs. This stunning film is about the family of Oskar in Danzig (Poland/Germany) during the time Nazism was creeping its way through Europe and is seen through the eyes of Oskar, a boy who refuses to grow at the age of 3 and does so by throwing himself off the stairs. Unlike Peter Pan, Oskar does this in protest of the inevitable Third Reich. Beautifully shot in the same location with a haunting musical score by Maurice Jarre and a brilliant performance by David Bennent as Oskar. The story is bizarre enough to keep you glued to your seat and at the same time mesmerizes image after image. A great extra is an audio commentary by Volker Schlondorff, the film's director. One of the best films of its decade rivalling Fellini's Amarcord and Szabo's Mephisto.
Rating: 
Summary: He keeps drumming, and drumming, and drumming...
Review: Based on the book of the same name by Gunter Grass, this is the story of a boy who, when confronted with a crazy world and a toy tin drum, he decides that at the age of 3 he will stop growing.
This German film reflects the anxiety that affected the culture of pre-WWII and post-WWII. The motif of the drum showed how time marches on, but with everyone's life turning upside down Oskar felt he would rather keep time then grow with it.
This film is definitely an adult perspective on mid-19th-century German life and is inappropriate for youth. The conflict was both emotional and sexual, but even for the average American viewer, there is a certain shock value instilled in the varied relationships portrayed throughout the film.
Albeit different, this film did with Germany what "To Live" did with China, and that says something. In summary, I liked "The Tin Drum", as its impression is still poignant today.
Rating:
Summary: One of the supreme jewels from the german cinema!
Review: Bitter metaphor abou Oskar a three years old who decides by himself not to grow anymore just when the Nazis take the power in Germany . He beats in his drum and cries in a fierce loud crashing the windows every time he's in an anger mood. Gunter Grass literally broke the walls about the dark shadows about Germany's literature . That thought was in the mind of too many people after finnishing the WW2.
Therefore this novel reveals not only a deep conviction about the role of the artist in the world but it became a big slap in the face to many people .
The artistic movement after the WW2 in Germany was born with the guilty's syndrom . Think in music , literature and cinema world .
Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Heinrich Böll , Fassbinder , Alexander Kluge and Wolker Schlöndorff among other important voices and artists had to carry that weight on his shoulders and his mind .
However the art reacted in a brave way and gave important statements about their spiritual wounds.
This film deserved widely the Academy Award as best foreign film , being the first german movie that got it . Besides this work won the Palm'd or prize in Cannes Festival 1979 .
Add to this long list of triumphs, the splendid acting of the twelve years old actor David Bennent and countless reflections all along the film .
Simply mesmerizing!
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the book? ...err, beef?
Review: Die Blechtrommel (Volker Schlondorff, 1979)
There are goals I have had for long portions of my life. Some of them are grand, like the idea of opening a massive entertainment complex: bookstore, cigar store, restaurants, off-track betting, concert venue, and various other things (and perhaps making a franchise out of it). Some are far more modest.
In 1980, I read my first review of Volker Sclondorff's adaptation of Gunter Grass' 1959 novel The Tin Drum. I knew nothing of the novel at the time, and to be honest, I started wanting to see the movie because of all the sex that was supposedly in it. Then it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1981, which increased the desire. Then said desire skyrocketed when the movie was banned in Oklahoma City as child pornography. But, since it was generally unavailable in video stores, I put it on the back burner.
Skip forward to 1999, and I finally got round to reading Grass' novel (and the other two in the trilogy). To be short, The Tin Drum and its following two works (Cat and Mouse and Dog Years) are perhaps the best World War II novels ever written. The Tin Drum is a witty, deadpan look at the war through the eyes of a gnome, always biting. The trilogy is much of the reason Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature later in the year (1999).
So now, I finally get around to seeing Schlondorff's Academy-Award winning film. Somewhere along the way, I forgot one of my rules of thumb: that any movie, with a few exceptions, that won an Academy Award during the eighties quite simply isn't worth watching.
Schlondorff (Homo Faber, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Handmaid's Tale, etc.) directs
the screen debut of young David Bennent (She Hate Me, Legend) as Oskar Matzerath, the hero of the tale and carrier of the title object. Oskar, who receives the drum for his third birthday, looks around at the debauchery to which the adults turn his birthday party, and resolves he's never going to grow past the age of three. (Oskar, it should be noted, is quite the observant tyke, even in the womb, so this behavior is not out of character.) He concocts a cover story for why he stops growing by throwing himself down the cellar stairs. Sure enough, Oskar stays the same height as he was on his third birthday the rest of his life-- not that the film lets you know that, though I get ahead of myself.
Oskar's shrewd eyes view World War II and its aftermath, and that's basically the plot of the film. While the novel is episodic, it's never overly so; you can tell there's a whole there. Schlondorff and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere (The Horseman on the Roof) turn the novel (or the pieces of it he adapted, anyway) into a string of episodes from a bad, unfunny sitcom. Huge pieces of the novel, especially Oskar's later years, are simply left out, leaving us with a string of disconnected pieces that never tie back into anything. The Siege of the Polish Post Office, a section of the book about which whole critical works have been written laying testament to its genius, is played as a straight war piece. You are given no clues as to why the characters do the things they do (for example, Jan and Oskar playing cards with their dying friend Kobyella (Polish film star Mieczyslaw Czechowicz, in what was ultimately his final film role) as the Post Office is shelled by German tanks, or Oskar shrieking the windows out of a church across the way early in the film (important in the novel, meaningless in the movie).
It's as if Schlondorff were making a movie that would be seen exclusively by those who had read the novel; Grass fans will get the significance of the eel harvest, but those who've never read the novel won't. Such is the case with almost every scene in the film.
I recently read Roger Ebert's original review of the film, reprinted in I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, and figured that in this case (as in a number of others in the book), Ebert simply hadn't gotten it, probably for want of having read the novel. Unfortunately, I was only partially right; Ebert may not have gotten it for want of having read the novel, but I got the sinking feeling just after saying "they CAN'T be ending the film here! There's another hundred fifty pages of the book to go!" that Schlondorff, too, didn't get it, for the same reason.
Oh, and the sex? There's more of it in The Terminator. And the notorious kiddie porn? I don't know what the age of consent is in the various countries in Europe where the film was shot and/or is set (Germany, France, Poland, and Croatia), so I've no idea whether it is or not; Brennent was thirteen when the film was made (and there's no guarantee that wasn't a body double in the sex scenes, anyway), and the youngest of his paramours, the lovely Katherina Thalbach (Sophie's Choice, Till Eulenspiegel), was in her twenties. You be the judge.
I'm probably being unreasonably harsh because of twenty-five years of dashed expectations. A number of the actors turn in fine performances, there are scenes of great humor (though not nearly as many as there are in the book), and Schlondorff probably did the best to get as much of the book in as he could; the movie, abbreviated as it is, runs almost two and a half hours. I'd love to see a remake of this, or even better, an adaptation of the whole trilogy, so the surreal effect of, say, the parade in the woods (part of The Tin Drum cut from the film) showing up in Dog Years could be fully realized. Spielberg could do it. He'd just have to add a disclaimer at the end about how no youths were harmed in the making of the film in order to placate the idiot right-wing Christians in Oklahoma. **
Rating:
Summary: eternally grateful for this movie
Review: for the fact it awoke my bored teenage mind, and led me to read the most remarkable book ever written.......
Rating:
Summary: classic, a philosophical and stylistic triumph
Review: Guther Grass wrote this novel in response to Theodor Adorno's anguished statement that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. The Tin Drum is one of the only successful attempts to pick up the pieces after World War II, and ranks as one of the greatest triumphs over grief, belonging with Beethoven and Dante. The story is well-adapted, depicting the atmosphere and images in the only way I can imagine it to be, which makes it "a masterpiece in its own right," separate from the novel. Regarding this film as child porn and void of depth is to be entirely ignorant of the profound themes it deals with, and the revolutionary way it deals with them - with asceticism and ambivalence, humorous yet dire.
Rating:
Summary: A funny, disturbing, BRILLIANT work of art!
Review: I am a film fanatic. I lie awake at night and stress about all the films I may not see if I die tomorrow. Every now and then I finally get to view a film I've always wanted to see, but haven't had a chance until now. THE TIN DRUM is one of those films. I've read about it for years, but fate had it that I didn't see it until Criterion released this magnificent edition. I can't get the film out of my mind now! I've purchased the book and plan to start reading it immediately. The imagery (both beautiful and horrifying), the composition of the shots, the editing, the music, the characters, the history, the symbolism, the performances (especially the little boy beating his tin drum and screaming his piercing scream to block out the horrors of what he sees in the world around him)- ALL of these points add up to what I can only call a MASTERPIECE of filmmaking! The experience of watching this film will haunt me forever and will always hold a special place in my movie collection. The film is not for everyone, but it definitely struck a chord with me.
Rating:
Summary: THE WORST OF THE WORST OF THE WORST!
Review: I am speachless. I have never seen a strip of film as screwed up as this one. It should have a warning on it. I had never really doubted our freedom of speech before I watched this film, but now I am glad there are laws to protect my sanity. There are only a certain few people that can watch this moovie. I've seen bad and now I've seen worse. If you liked this moovie I would recomend some Pink Floyd: The Wall.
Rating: 
Summary: A Minor Masterpiece
Review: I first saw this movie in the early 1980's and was pretty shocked then as a college student. Looking at it now I can see why. This movie, to clear one thing up, was made with the AUTHOR's blessing and contribution, as is made clear from the included booklet. I believe it is an accurate appraisal of that time in very symbolic terms. A similar treatment of WWII and its immediate aftermatch would be the book, The Painted Bird by Kosinski. Also, like that book, it is filled with sex paired with violence, and many nauseating images. So it is not at all easy to watch, but as a film buff I appreciate a good bit of it.
Stay clear away if you are easily disturbed. If you miss this you will not miss a masterpiece. It is well done, and Criterion's treatment of it is, as always, quite stunning.
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