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Spine 234: The Tin Drum
Lost in Criterion
English - April 21, 2017 15:51 - 1 hour - ★★★ - 42 ratingsTV & Film Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Yesterday was Hitler's birthday, so here's a film with a complicated relationship to Nazis?
On the one hand Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum (1979) does show some of the horrors of living under Nazi occupation in Gdańsk-- I've just now learned that Danzig is the German name for the city, and it seems inappropriate to use it here, Gdansk is the Polish name -- and it briefly embodies the aftermath of the Holocaust in one scarred character (who was only recently re-added to the film for this Criterion release). On the other it is based on a book by a man that hid that he was a Nazi soldier for decades and is about someone who uses Nazism when its useful to him and abandons it when its not.
Of course it's also about a little boy who quite literally refuses to grow up.
As I said, it's complicated.