This Oscar-winning adaptation of Günter Grass's novel is an absurdist fantasy about a little German boy (David Bennent) who wills himself at the age of three not to grow up in protest of the Nazi regime. Made unnecessarily notorious in recent years due to overzealous censors in some parts of the United States, the film is more startling and surreal than obscene. Bennent is very good, and while the 1979 film doesn't meet the high standards of the best work from the then-renaissance of German film, it has a special place in the hearts of many who saw it upon its release. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff (
The Handmaid's Tale).
--Tom Keogh
Based on the classic novel by Gunter Grass, this drama of a young boy who beats a tin drum to combat his feelings of desperation and anger during the rise of the Third Reich is as dark and disturbing as it is utterly compelling. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
