"The Tin Drum" is a German film adapted from the novel of the same name in the 1980s. It won the Oscar for foreign language films in the year it was released (1980), and the original work was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. In my opinion, it tells the story of "the boy who never grows up" Oscar, and the story of a boy who abandoned his fantasies.
Although I haven't read the original book, judging from the content of the film, I would consider it to be a realistic fantasy work, because the film is full of rough scenes - hot bricks under skirts, scarlet flesh during production, dead horses drilling out eels Heads, eels chopped off raw, pickled herring on ice, and those pristine nudity shots. In such a world of stories full of earthly atmosphere, the protagonist Oscar is a bit of magic: if you don't grow up, you don't have to grow up, and the high-pitched voice can shatter the glass (even engraving on the glass - this is true too bizarre).
He is so bizarre that there are inevitably some surreal scenes in the later film, that is, they watch the souls of the shot nuns slowly ascend to the sky while they picnic on the seaside embankment. The director/writer/author of the original book may think that dwarfs (or other groups that retain the appearance or stature of children) are spiritual, just as the protagonist Oscar's girlfriend who was killed in an airstrike for coffee, also has the ability to read people's hearts. Of course, it could actually be magic, but I'd rather think of it as a manifestation of some sort of mystical power.
The protagonist Oscar's "don't want to grow up" ended with his father's death, and also began with his father-he witnessed the ambiguous relationship between his mother and his cousin, which is no different from betrayal of his father. But as he walked along the way, through the deaths of his mother, cousin, girlfriend, and father, he finally made up his mind to start growing up. Although the narration is the child's voice of the protagonist, if we can grasp the age of the protagonist, what we actually see is the growth history of a teenager: from a playful child to a silent youth.
Under the appearance of a three-year-old, Oscar has always maintained the characteristics of a child throughout the film. While the exterior hasn't changed, Oscar has always grown -- on a spiritual level.
When he was really in his childhood, with a tin drum, he would disturb the rhythm of the orchestra, making Nazi rallies a mere dance. As time passed, war, political situation and the death of his mother, he lost his innocence and only retained his childlike willfulness (indirectly led to the death of his cousin/biological father), as well as the evil peculiar to children - deliberately teasing maids (later stepmother) and had sex with her, being rejected for being pitiful, trying to kill the child in her stepmother's womb, etc. After going through the war and witnessing the death of his lover, he fled back to his home, silent and happy, like a surviving recruit on a lap around the front. Interestingly, at this point in the movie, he seems to have been deliberately hidden to the side and is no longer the focus of the movie. Oscar finally returned to center stage at the time of his father's burial. He gave up the tin drum and the right to "don't grow up anymore". With the passing of the train and the back view of my grandmother working hard, the film officially comes to an end.
And World War II, in the film is not only the background, but also the main driving force of the plot. It may be assumed that if Oscar was born in a peaceful age and did not experience this period of ups and downs, would he give up the right to "no longer grow up"? It may be, but it may be delayed for a long time. I can only say that Never Island had to obey the Nazi guns. When Peter Pan met Hiedler, he could only raise his hands and surrender, like being attacked by the Nazis. Like ripe mangoes, complete the growth from children to youth.
In Danzig or other similar lands, such a story goes on and on. When the tin drum stops beating, innocence is gone, and reality comes with pain.
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