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| David
Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach,
Daniel Olbrychski |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Agnes (Angela Winkler): It's too
much of everything, and it keeps piling up.
A young boy in Nazi Germany refuses
to grow until after the war is over.
 Volker
Schlöndorff's masterful adaptation of Günther Grass's gargantuan
novel is an absolute model of literary adaptation, shaping the
surreal contents of this 'unfilmable' book into a true masterpiece
of cinema. The film's triumph is its casting of gnomish twelve-year-old
David Bennent, whose savagely funny voice-over narration matches
the tone of the book perfectly. On top of that, Schlöndorff concocts
a mix of visual styles, ranging from brief snippets of stylized,
speeded-up action to the convincing realism of many of the film's
impressive locations. Like the novel, the end result is unique,
powerful and at times completely indecipherable. |
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Although several different DVD
versions have been released previously in various territories
(including a now-OOP Region 1 DVD from Kino Video), the only
version with both superior audio and video quality and outstanding
extras is the region-free double-platter set from The Criterion
Collection, which served as the basis for this review.
The anamorphic widescreen
image is windowboxed at its original aspect ratio of approx.
1.66:1.
The Dolby
Digital 5.1 sound mix is
 Yet
another two-disc triumph from Criterion for this modern classic's
long-awaited (and quite definitive) DVD release. On disc
one, beside the film and an isolated track for Maurice Jarre's
score, you'll
find an excellent audio commentary from the director.
Disc Two has some choice material as well, starting with a five-minute sequence
of
deleted scenes. The audio has been lost, but Schlöndorff provides commentary
for these as well, and they're fascinating
to look at; most of them center on Oskar's time in the circus.
Next,
the 20-minute featurette 'Volker
Schlöndorff Remembers The Tin Drum' is a 2001 German documentary
for which Schlöndorff recorded an English-language track in 2004. It covers
some of the same ground as the commentary track, and features on-set photographs,
storyboards, rehearsal shots, and valuable info from the director on the filmmaking
process.
Next, under the heading News From the Front, are four brief clips from French
television. The
Platform offers a great compare and contrast: it's a crucial scene
from the film, with the option of listening to Grass read the relevant passage
from his novel. You can see that Schlöndorff has been respectful of the
book, without following it slavishly. There are also script pages
from an unshot original ending, with an audio introduction from the
director; the story follows Oskar into the 1950s, offering a succinct roundup
of the second half of the book,
but
Schlöndorff
wisely
chose to end his film with the armistice.
The most entertaining item is the half-hour documentary Banned
in Oklahoma,
a
documentary
directed
about 1997 attempts in Oklahoma City to have The Tin Drum declared
to be child pornography. Incredibly, the Oklahoma police barged in on anyone
who had rented the film from Blockbuster video after the soon-overturned initial
judge's
ruling on the film. One of the people who faced police officers on his doorstep
was a self-appointed moral crusader: an attention-grabbing activist with a penchant
for spewing bad poetry and quite awful self-penned songs further promoting himself
and his crusade. Once more, a morals debate in the United States swiftly descends
into a PR war between two groups of people in search of attention.
Finally, a stills gallery offers images of posters, and renderings of the Oskars
in their head by Grass, Schlöndorff and Bennent; the accompanying booklet
features edifying comments from the novelist about the director, and a useful
essay by Eric Rentschler situating the film in the context of postwar German
cinema.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: August
2, 2004
Click
here for IMDB info on The
Tin Drum.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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