"Die Blechtrommel" or "The Tin Drum" is a German movie from over 35 years ago that managed to win an Academy Award in the Foreign Language Feature category as well as winning the Palme d'Or in Cannes. I cannot really see why though. I watched the director's cut of this film and it runs for almost 2 hours and 45 minutes. Certainly a case of quantity over quality here. David Bennent was actually a good choice for the main character as his face was truly memorable. However, the solid acting by him and established actors like Adorf, Winkler, Olbrychski and the young Katharina Thalbach was not enough to make up for the flaws that this film has.Occasionall scenes with soldiers or speeches by Hitler and other Nazi officials are not enough to make a film a convincing political/war movie. And apart from that, the stories were simply really more absurd than interesting. This goes for the main character's mother having several men at the same time or at the depiction of pedophilia later on, which wasn't even shown as something bad here. Maybe the reason is because this film is so strictly against Hitler, his politics and World War II, so pedophilia something bad that even the Nazis despised was not depicted as really evil for that reason here. But the worst aspect was probably the storyline that the boy stopped growing because he decided to do so. Does it make sense that he did not want to be like adults in this world? Maybe. But don't all kids would like to stay young at some point? Why can't they do it? Complete nonsense rally. The inclusion of dwarf people that apparently made the same decision was really the negative highlight for this plot. I am not sure to what extent this film is based on Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' work and how close Schlöndorff stayed to the original, but in any case I cannot say this was a successful film adaptation. It's not a great family movie, not a great war movie, not a great political thriller and it's also not worth watching for the historic context. Maybe it could be considered fantasy. But if you hear about a fantasy movie about Hitler, you knew you're in for something that is guilty pleasure material at best. This one here is not. It's just bad. Not recommended and certainly one of the worst Foreign Language Film winners in Oscar history. Also they could have kept this easily at around 100 minutes without losing any of the film's value. So many unnecessary scenes. But I guess they wanted to go for bloated here for whatever reason.

Danzig in the 1920s/1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with full intellect right from his birth he decides at his third birthday not to grow up as he sees the crazy world around him at the eve of World War II.This is very much a fantasy film. IMDb says it is a war drama, which is true enough, being set in the place and time that it is. But this is less about the war and more about Oskar, which I think makes it a fantasy film. His imagination is incredible, or perhaps more incredible is the idea that none of this is his imagination at all. His ability to alter the world around him is quite interesting.The idea of a tin drum as a symbol of protest makes sense. It becomes even more interesting when put in the hands of a small child, protesting against life itself. Such an action is unheard of.

This German film came as with many other foreign films I've seen in recent years from the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I have a thought process that tells me to try as many if not all films in the book, no matter what, so I did. Basically, set in Danzig, Germany the film takes place before, during and at the end of World War II, and focuses on the life of young Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), before being born his mother wasn't sure who his father was, as she had two love interests, she married German man Alfred Matzerath (Mario Adorf), but she continued an affair with Polish cousin Jan Bronski (Daniel Olbrychski). At age 3 Oskar was given a tin drum for his birthday, he is not happy with the world around him as he grows up, so he halted his growth as a child throwing himself down the basement stairs, his tin drum becomes his comfort, but also perhaps his obsession, as he never lets it go throughout, and he found the ability that his high pitch scream can shatter glass, which he uses to stop anyone trying to take his drum away from him. Poland is invading by the German Nazis, including the small town the family live, there are two family deaths, his mother Anna Koljaiczek (Berta Drews) who kills herself swallowing large amounts of raw fish, and Jan Bronski who is killed by the Nazis while continuing to work at the Polish post office, Oskar is sheltered with his peasant cousin Maria Matzerath (Katharina Thalbach) and her father, she over a short time becomes his stepmother, but also his lover, and she ends up pregnant when they have sex. It is unclear if Oskar really is the father, but he assumes baby Kurt born is his son, but he does not stick around as he meets an old dwarf acquaintance Bebra (Fritz Hakl) who invites him to join the travelling circus of other dwarfs that perform to escape the threat the war, he entertains with his screaming talent and occasionally the tin drum, and it is there that he meets his second love Roswitha (Mariella Oliveri). This romance is cut short before the war comes to an end, and he can do nothing but go home, and returning Oskar faces the tragic loss of his father, and at the funeral he finds the strength to finally let go of his tin drum as he buries it with the coffin, and that same day his son Kurt hits him over the head with a rock, and his bodily growth is restored. Also starring Angela Winkler as Agnes Matzerath and Charles Aznavour as Sigismund Markus. In the leading part young Bennent is a fascinating character, with his piercing eyes expressing some severe emotions and never truly growing up, the film is full of surreal moments, especially any part with the tin drum and the young man's insistence to always have it and never let it go, even in dangerous situations, and of course the war element of the story is powerful in portraying struggle to survive and loss, the visuals are fantastic, and it has a lot of expressionism, it is indeed powerful and memorable wartime drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Very good!

And now for something completely different. A German tale as told by Oskar, while at a mental hospital in the early 1950s. The boy ever grows up and has the ability to scream so loudly that he can shatter glass and knock people down with it. He is a child prodigy with adult intellect in a forever small body. He claims two fathers, Alfred, a Nazi married to his mother, and Jan, a Polish man executed by the Germans during the invasion of Poland.He becomes a carnival entertainer with a group of other dwarfs during the war, and when his girlfriend is killed, he returns to Danzig where he leads a criminal gang. The Russians soon take over and shoot Alfred. Oskar had stopped playing the drum after Alfred's death but starts playing again with two other musicians, and they become a successful jazz band. He is walking through a field and finds the finger of a girl he was in love with and becomes involved in her murder investigation. The whole story is told from Oskar's perspective. The Tin Drum is a very unusual experience.