The Tin Drum (1979)

Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Writers: Jean-Claude Carrière, Günter Grass 
Stars: David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler 
Runtime: 142 minutes

Plot: The Tin Drum is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass.

Review: In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into an adult, he vows never to get any older or any bigger.

Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. 

David Bennent undertook his most unusual role in this film. What makes the performance so remarkable is that although the looks of the character don't change appreciably, the manners, the authority, the wit, and the mind of Oskar does. 

The screenplay, written by Mr. Schlšndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière and Franz Seitz, does not cover quite as much ground as Mr. Grass's novel, but it attempts to cover more than can be adequately comprehended in even a 142-minute film.

The Tin Drum is a big film loaded with symbols and multiple layers of meaning, and is really something one needs to experience for themselves. It's no surprise that the intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm.

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Reviewed by S.M. Intisab Shahriyar