The road of German film production has inevitably become an ideological propaganda tool for the Nazis since Hitler came to power (1933). Just as Chinese literature in the 1940s showed the heroic complex of workers, peasants and soldiers, the themes of their expressions were bound and bound by force. stagnation, reduced to universality and stagnation. Without the romantic imagination, art cannot bear the sense of utopian redemption. The production of German films has not been consumed and received good feedback, and has entered a bottleneck. Therefore, the New German Film Movement that emerged as the times require is not without reason.
Confident film artists flaunt their confidence - "the old movies are dead". From then on, new themes, new expression techniques, and new storylines all have obvious transcendence intentions. The new film four Jewerner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbender and Wim Wenders have made many great attempts at personalization . The Tin Drum is one of the culminations of the New German Cinema movement. Generally speaking, films adapted from novels will always have mixed reviews, and the shooting pressure is very high, but as the director of the film, Schlondorf has already walked on the artistic road of adaptation with ease. Young actor David Bennett's excellent acting skills successfully interpret the theme of refusing to grow up alone against a dark political background, adding a lot to the film.
one. The ugly reality of changing perspectives
"The Tin Drum" tells the story of a three-year-old child Oscar hiding under the table at a dinner party and discovering the secret of his mother's affair with his uncle. He believes that the adult world is full of deceit, so he decides not to grow up and stay at the age of three. on the height. Children's eyes witness the adult world by "looking up", and the camera uses a low angle to lead the audience to follow Oscar's life. The shift in perspective highlights the unconventional nature of the story, making it even more absurd. In order to reject the ugly reality that he has endured, the child's special function of shattering the glass by screaming better protects himself from the outside world.
After being detached from the mother at the beginning, the baby sees the upside-down world in an upside-down form, crying and eager to return to the mother's body. The tin drum made him find the meaning of life, but he still hated the unscrupulous and taboo behavior of elders from the perspective of children. After stopping growing up, Oscar's interaction with his grandmother always lies in Oscar's desire to hide in his grandmother's four skirts, seek shelter under the skirts, and refuse to communicate with the outside world. Oscar's attachment to his mother becomes alienated and sidelined by the intervention of his uncle.
In the context of political turmoil and changing times, Oscar witnesses his mother's sexual tragedy all the way. The death of his mother is caused by the contradiction between reality and sexual desire that cannot be balanced, which also makes Oscar inevitably want to get fantasy love to sympathize with his lack of maternal love. In addition, the repression of political reality prevented him from having a good childhood, and the only tin drum that accompanied him became the object of Oscar's pronunciation. Every drum beat is a metaphor for rejection and rejection of reality.
Oscar's body and perspective are perfectly voyeuristic. Peeping mother and uncle's sex, peeping political manifesto events and orgies, peeping father's adultery with Maria. The camera distorts the cruel world witnessed by the child, making the audience gasp.
The maid Maria, who replaced her mother, completed Oscar's coming-of-age ceremony, which also allowed Oscar to taste the beauty of love. But what followed was witnessing Maria's betrayal - venting her anger towards Oscar and asking for forgiveness after having sex with Oscar's father. Unfortunately, when he witnessed the ugly adult world again, Oscar chose to refuse again and maintained his self-esteem. .
Oscar lost family members one after another, from his mother to his uncle, to his father and his beloved little dwarf Reguna. Political battles have taken away Oscar's relatives. Oscar can do nothing about such a departure. He has no choice but to beat his tin drum desperately to vent his emotions. When burying his father, he chose to throw away his tin drum and grow up again. This is his mature attitude to confront reality. The distant train leaves an extended blank for the story.
two. Image Interpretation and Symbolic Meaning
Almost every character in The Tin Drum has its own representative image. The grandmother's four dresses brought the birth and continuation of life. The absence of patriarchy can be said to be a metaphor for Germany's lack of a strong position at the time.
Oscar's mother was dragged by love all her life and ended up eating too much raw fish and died. During her lifetime, she quarreled with her husband for refusing to eat raw fish, but the strength of the male-dominated discourse, even if she resisted her husband's authority, eventually surrendered to her beloved cousin. The tragedy of Oscar's mother is the predicament that women cannot be independent and need to rely on men when facing their own emotions. The image of raw fish shows her stubbornness and despair, and it also reveals the sexual tragedy of her refusal to give birth again.
The homemade soda powder bag was originally a pure gift for Maria to harvest love, but the likes and emotions in the previous article are in sharp contrast with the soda powder given by Oscar when Maria was crying bitterly. For the smart and selfish Maria, she wants a legitimate identity to gain a new status and a foothold in life, but Oscar's father only sees her as a sexual tool for the purpose of venting his lust. The existence of soda powder satirizes love and cuts Maria's innocence.
Oscar's father's party emblem is both a sign of his Nazi identity and a source of self-destruction. The manifestation of the Oedipus archetype here is very strong. Oscar deliberately put the party emblem in his hand back to his father when the Soviet Red Army entered the house to search. According to his age, Oscar at that time was seventeen or eighteen years old, and he knew more about the danger posed by the party emblem. If his return was a prank, it would be a revenge. To avenge his father's oppression of his mother, and to avenge his father's occupation of his beloved. The death of the father can even free up the "father" position for Oscar to reunite the family with Maria and the real son. This is a small analysis outside the film. But I have to say that the existence of my father, interspersed in the political background of the film, has a certain critical meaning.
Oscar's tin drum is the highlight. The Tin Drum is a metaphor for Oscar's rejection and rejection of the adult world and political reality. The venting of emotions is perfectly displayed in the sound of the tin drum and his own screams, highlighting the true temperament of the child in his childhood, and also the opposition and subversion of the German political road. The Tin Drum was finally thrown into the grave by Oscar, and he returned to his normal growth because of his son's attack with a stone. From now on, he no longer needs a tool such as a tin drum to express his wishes, and he faces the future more calmly, which may also be a bright tail for Germany's future.
As a typical war movie, "The Tin Drum" caused a craze for critics. Its irony and subversion of fascist politics has an uncomfortable feeling of being too small to see big in the witness of a child like Oscar. But it is this kind of discomfort that makes us more clearly feel the director's meticulous experience of the novel and the excellent skills of film shooting.
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