For this reason, he decides to not grow up, a feat accomplished by throwing himself down the stairs at age three.

When Oskar (ostensibly Alfred’s son, but in fact Jan’s) is born, he already has the mind of an adult, and he doesn’t think much of the behavior of the actual adults around him. Jumping forward a few decades, the adult Agnes is carrying on an affair with her cousin Jan (Daniel Olbrychski), but marries Alfred Matzzerath (Mario Adorf). That establishes the tone for the film-no illusions about the nobility of human nature here, thank you very much. Oskar’s grandmother takes pity on an arsonist fleeing the police, hiding him under her ample skirts, and he takes advantage of the opportunity thus presented. The film begins with a prologue of sorts, depicting the singularly undignified conception of Oscar’s mother Agnes (Angela Winkler) in a potato field. The Tin Drum is a picaresque tale of a young boy named Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), who serves as a witness to the course of European history from the ’20s through World War II. Fortunately, while Schlöndorff (and Grass) harbor no illusions about their characters or their homelands (Grass was born near Gdansk, Schlöndorff in Wiesbaden), both managed to maintain their sense of humor, so it’s not at all a chore to watch The Tin Drum, even if it’s sometimes painful.

It’s wise to keep this in mind when watching Volker Schlöndorff’s masterful adaption of Günther Grass’s novel, The Tin Drum: what you are seeing on the screen is metaphor, and the reality was much, much worse. The course of German history in the first half of the 20th century does not make for a pretty picture.

The tin drum movie