Watch The Tin Drum For Free

Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

Great Film overall

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I am thrilled that someone with some clout agrees with be, because apparently Rogert Ebert and I are in the minority here. Do I see why this film is so lauded? I suppose. But its cons, namely the annoying-screaming-selfish- spoiled-face-of-a-kid-who-is-more-a-menacing- presence-than-a-representation-of-youth, far outweigh any of that. And on top of that, we are supposed to utilize that suspension of disbelief and believe that this kid randomly decided to cease growing at the age of 3, throwing himself down a flight of cellar stairs as a credible explanation for this phenomenon? Furthermore, listen to his incessant drumming on the tin drum that permanently rests around his neck? If he gives that stoic, wide eyed look as he sends his high pitched scream into the ethers one more time, I swear I would strangle him if I could. I could not concentrate on any of the historical significance of this film, so distracting was our narrator. Other problems included the unexpected, unexplained, and unnerving suicide of his mother by eating raw fish and sexual scenes of equal disquiet. In fact, as recently as the 1990s had the mayor of Oklahoma City banning and confiscating copies of this film (resulting in a high profile overruling by the state district court). It was also banned in Canada in the 1980s, child pornography listed as the reason. Thankfully, the background story of his family was at least amusing and his daily adventures do elicit a couple entertaining anecdotes (i.e. how his grandparents met- in modern day Poland, his grandfather is evading authorities and discovers the perfect hiding place underneath the large skirt of his grandmother, sprawled in a potato field; his mother and her two lovers- who are friends, resulting in a love triangle that casts doubt on the true identity of Oskar's father). I understand this was based on the book by Günther Grass, the first in a trilogy and far more detailed. I also understand that this was not exactly the best adaptation and I certainly would like to think that is true because this film did not impress whatsoever. Here is Roger Ebert, echoing my thoughts (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tin- drum-1980): Allegories have trouble standing for something else if they are too convincing as themselves. That is the difficulty with "The Tin Drum," which is either (a) an allegory about one person's protest against the inhumanity of the world, or (b) the story of an obnoxious little boy. The movie invites us to see the world through the eyes of little Oskar, who on his third birthday refuses to do any more growing up because the world is such a cruel place... There is a scene in which Oskar's drum so confuses a Nazi marching band that it switches from a Nazi hymn to "The Blue Danube." The crashing obviousness of this scene aside, I must confess that the symbolism of the drum failed to involve me. And here we are at the central problem of the movie: Should I, as a member of the audience, decide to take the drum as, say, a child's toy protest against the marching cadences of the German armies? Or should I allow myself to be annoyed by the child's obnoxious habit of banging on it whenever something's not to his liking? Even if I buy the wretched drum as a Moral Symbol, I'm still stuck with the kid as a pious little bastard. But what about the other people in the movie? Oskar is right at the middle of the tug-of-war over Danzig and, by implication, over Europe. People are choosing up sides between the Poles and the Nazis. Meanwhile, all around him, adult duplicity is a way of life... Soon after, he finds himself on the road with a troupe of performing midgets. He shatters glasses on cue, marches around in uniform and listens as the troupe's leader explains that little people have to stay in the spotlight or big people will run the show. This idea is the last Oskar needs to have implanted in his mind. The movie juxtaposes Oskar's one-man protest with the horror of World War II. But I am not sure what the juxtaposition means. Did I miss everything? I've obviously taken the story on a literal level, but I don't think that means I misread the film as it stands. If we come in armed with the Grass novel and a sheaf of reviews, it's maybe just possible to discipline ourselves to read "The Tin Drum" as a solemn allegorical statement. But if we take the chance of just watching what's on the screen, Schlondorff never makes the connection. We're stuck with this cretinous little kid, just when Europe has enough troubles of its own.

If you are looking for something different, look no further. This is probably one of the strangest films I've ever seen though at times it seemed as though I was watching a big budgeted Hollywood epic. Soon though I was reminded that this was NOT your typical American film. No sirree. The Tin Drum takes place during the Third Reich in Danzig. Little Oskar decides he doesn't want to become an adult and throws himself down the stairs to the cellar in his home and stops growing. Yes, stops growing.He continually bangs on a tin drum I suppose out of rage. I won't give away anything here but the film contains some bizarre images, some grotesque. I can handle a lot but one scene literally turned my stomach. So should you watch it? The film is well made. The acting excellent by everyone. The costumes and sets are all excellent. The film is very long and becomes a bit tiring. There are some silly moments that made me shake my head. Some of it made me laugh. If you are going to create a bizarre and unconventional film don't subject me to silliness. I can't handle it.The film is interesting but it should have been shorter and there should have been a character I could relate to better.

'The Tin Drum' is so bizarre and stirs up such a mix of appreciation, fascination, revulsion and whatever the best word for "thoroughly weirded out" is that I actually can't rate it. The best comparison I can offer potential viewers is 'Taxi Driver'. (And now that I've said that legions of American film buffs will damn me for a heretic, but it's true.) The central character is intentionally only minimally sympathetic--your fellow-feeling with Oskar (as with the protagonist in 'Taxi Driver') begins and ends with the sense that the world he lives in, a reflection of the world you live in, is a madhouse. Bad things happen to good people and the reverse, innocence is too often functionally equal to stupidity, people are jerks, and life is brutally, cruelly unfair. But the way he deals with it is grotesque, unrealistic and simply can't work. What keeps you watching is a morbid fascination with a single question: "How long can he get away with it?" (Fair warning: "grotesque" in 'Taxi Driver' and "grotesque" in 'The Tin Drum' take very different forms. The WWII setting does not make this 'Life is Beautiful'; the coming-of-age aspect does not make this a charming film. If you're an American and you're not used to the unconventional/off-kilter visions of childhood in some of the films of Europe, this is not the place to start. I recommend Francois Truffaut's films for that.)Other reviewers have criticized the film for promoting Oskar's attitude and choices, expecting the audience to like him. They're mistaken; I don't think you ARE supposed to like him. It's true that in American film making one is supposed to identify with the principal character(s) and cheer them on, as it were. But it's not a hard and fast rule; 'In Cold Blood' proved that. Oskar's twisted response to the chaos around him is as much a part of the film's social/political/human commentary as the chaos itself.'The Tin Drum' is based on a book, which I have yet to read but am curious to do, because knowing that I feel like I'm missing part of the picture. People who are familiar with the book seem to know a bit more about what in heaven's name is up with the weirdest of the weirdness in the film. I'd like to be able to claim more understanding of this formidable master work than I can right now.Some book-based films you're better off seeing before you read the book so that the good things still outweigh the "WTF?! That's not part of the story!" ('Apocalypse Now', 'The Vampire's Assistant') and some films are so intriguing that they lead you to gobble up mountains of original books ('True Grit', 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World').... and some films you just won't fully understand/appreciate unless you know the whole story. 'The Tin Drum', for me, belongs to the second group. But in all honesty, for a lot of people, it probably belongs to the third.

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.