Best movie of this year hands down!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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

I'm reviewing the Criterion DVD restoration of 2013.I was talking about this film this morning with a friend. It is one of his favorites; he said he could remember even small details like the heart-shaped crack in the wineglass that Oskar makes for Roswitha. Reading some of the reviews above, I'm astonished at the lack of empathy and imagination displayed by the reviewers. As a Christian--even a lax one--I find nothing depraved or obscene in this movie. It is something you have to watch with a historical perspective. Nazi youth rallies were exercises in mass hysteria, just as the one shown here. Oskar's parents had to be watchful in case the police caught him--as a dwarf, he was in danger of being euthanized. There are many instances of a police state that I could mention but will not.The performances are marvelous. Angela Winker is great as the mother carrying on an affair with Bronski under the oblivious eyes of the family. Mario Adorf as Matzerath plays a warm, caring man who is caught up in the Nazi craziness. He understands that his wife is cheating on him but ignores it for the sake of the family. Daniel Olbrychski is the elegant and befuddled Bronski to a T. David Bennent's eyes sometimes remind me of the kids in Village of the Damned, but he's always convincing.

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

There's never a dull moment in this allegorical film about growing up -- or deciding NOT to grow up -- in a German/Polish village between the first and second World Wars. Everyday life is coarse. The cobblestone streets are crowded with horse-drawn buggies and vendors. Everyone seems to shout or to talk emphatically. There are pompous political festivals and fustian speeches that end in rainstorms. Enthusiastic bands march clumsily around, hitting innumerable clinkers. People sit at tables and eat unappetizing meals, not decorously, but more like animals -- not "essen" but "fressen." Sometimes they stuff themselves with fish until they die. There are grotesqueries: circuses, dwarfs, clowns, superhumanly tall psychotics. If we didn't know it was a German movie directed by Volker Schlondorff, we might mistake it for Fellini.But it's from Gunther Grass's novel about a little boy who sees the political climate changing around him and decides to stop growing at the age of three. We follow him until he's twenty, through strife, love affairs, grief, disgust.The background for all this is the development of Naziism in Germany, which the little boy, Oscar, refuses to participate in. What a case of arrested development although, like Forrest Gump, he has one outstanding ability that makes him different from others, and that's a high piercing scream that shatters glass.It's a strange film, ambiguous and full of symbols, some of which got by me. I didn't get Oscar's attachment to his tin drum, for instance, unless it stands for Oscar's neoteny, which, itself, stands for Oscar's unwillingness to grow along with Fascism. In that case, though, the drum would be a higher-order symbol, a symbol of a symbol, or a metasymbol. Where was I? Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne both had a hell of a time getting their versions of "Lolita" made and released. (Child pornography, about which you wouldn't know, Lo.) But here Oscar runs around bare naked, falls in love with and marries a midget, and has intercourse with a teenaged girl whom he impregnates. But the blue noses are not up in arms about it. Those who made "Lolita" a nightmare to release have said nothing about it. Oh, Lo, how the mighty have ignored it.I haven't read the novel but I admire the movie for a couple of reasons, not just because of its recognition that Naziism was an aberration, but because everyone is given his or her due. The evil is there, and it's explored, but not exemplified in stereotypes. Oscar's step father, for instance, is swept up in the movement and wears his khaki uniform proudly, but he's more stupid than cruel -- brusque and thoughtless without being unkind. And Sigismund Markus (Charles Aznavour), the dreamy Jewish dry goods dealer who is in love with Oscar's mother. When he learns she's having an affair with a Polish citizen, he ironically advises her, "Don't bet on the Poles. Bet on the Germans. Or, better yet, bet on me." And if Oscar is the hero, sometimes the hero acts like a spoiled little brat. The film is narrated by Oscar in his little boy's voice and adds a good deal to our grasp of his feelings and of the backdrop against which this drama is played. It's not dull exposition. "I went here, then I lost track of my beloved, then I looked for another drum." Instead: "Once there was a gullible people who were told that Santa Claus was coming, but Santa Claus turned out to be the GAS man." (Cut to a scene of soldiers clearing a building with a flame thrower.) The narration is read most expressively.The movie begins with Oscar's grandmother back around the turn of the century, sitting on a heap of damp earth in a bleak farmland, scorching some potatoes in a small fire. At the end, when Oscar and the others leave, she remains behind. The final shot is of a train drawing away in the distance while an old lady sits before a smoky fire on a heap of dirt. I think I managed to catch that particular symbol. She's Anna Livia Plurabelle, right? A remarkable film.