The Tin Drum (1979)

I picked a war flick for Veterans Day, but it wasn't the best choice. The protagonist isn't a soldier, and the soldiers we see don't exactly look good to us. You'll understand why in a moment.

On his third birthday, Oskar (David Bennent, actual age 11 at the time) deliberately injures himself in a way that prevents him from growing physically anymore, which ensures that people never treat him as fully adult. That premise alone can be pretty disturbing, but it's also set in Nazi-occupied Poland. His own family sometimes supports the invaders, tho they learn better eventually.

Self-inflicted dwarfism isn't the only surreal thing about Oskar. He can scream loud enough to break glass -- with the precision to etch a heart shape into a wineglass. He also appears to have perfectly understood spoken words the day he was born (even then played by Bennent). You'd think this was going to be a comedy, and some viewers do consider it darkly comic. But as I've mentioned, foreign features frequently deviate from American genre expectations.

Strange that Oskar should be so precocious and yet so determined not to grow up. When his age hasn't been mentioned in a while, it's hard to guess, as his emotional maturity vacillates. He doesn't say much outside of narration, and if the subtitles are anything to go by, he tends to use bad grammar on purpose. Morally, he varies from decent to enfant terrible. Sometimes I was left to wonder why he did something so horrible, as well as why others underreacted to it. Most often, his shenanigans take the form of the aforementioned screams, stubbornly beating his titular drum at rude times (poorly matching the audio, I might add), and taking an interest in sex inappropriate even for his real age. He doesn't exactly have the best role models around on that, ah, score.

No discussion of TTD would be complete without mentioning its temporary ban in some places, because this actual preteen posing as a stunted 16-year-old did actual erotic things with a naked woman (Katharina Thalbach) on set, albeit not as lurid as in the story. Even putting that aside, it's controversial for depicting numerous decidedly nonconsensual sex acts, only one of which was regarded as rape within the film. And yes, Oskar commits at least one. I'm not sure whether only the characters or also the filmmakers weren't taking the matter seriously enough.

The 162-minute director's cut sure meanders. I get the impression that this comes of adapting a long book and not having room to keep everything neatly tied up. By the time it gets anywhere into Nazi atrocities, they seem understated. Of course, by then, I was so sick of Oskar and some of his relatives (whom I don't feel like identifying), along with some other gross details, that brutal murder hardly fazed me.

I have not heard of the other nominees for Academy Best Foreign Language Film from that year. It's possible that TTD really was worthiest, but I doubt it.