Even if I was not quite as stunned watching this once more, so many years after a video watch, it is still a brave effort and well worth seeing. Volker Schorndorff does a good job recreating the various Polish locales although the Blu ray does seem to show up the sets as rather bright and over polished with brand new posters slapped about. Apart from the magic of the original Gunter Grass novel, the most amazing thing here is the performance drawn from young David Bennett. Born in 1966 he looks far younger than he is and convinces as the three year old who never grows up. Well, maybe he seems more like five but it is a mesmerising performance, helped perhaps by having his constant prop, that inimitable tin drum. Charles Aznavour, in another pivotal role, is the Jewish toy shop proprietor who supplies and befriends the young lad. There are moving and surprisingly frank sexual scenes but inevitably we are moving through time towards the horrors of the second world war and the denouement as depicted here with that war's end. Grass's book goes further and very much makes the controversial but indisputable point that they are the same Germans who later go on to rebuild the nation (with lots of help) and then to dominate the 'new' Europe.
Review of The Tin Drum
