The Tin Drum - Die Blechtrommel (1979) (Criterion Collection, 2 DVDs)

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Danzig in the 1920s/1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with full intellect right from his birth he decides at his third birthday not to grow up as he sees the crazy world around him at the eve of World War II. So he refuses the society and his tin drum symbolizes his protest against the middle-class mentality of his family and neighborhood, which stand for all passive people in Nazi Germany at that time. However, (almost) nobody listens to him, so the catastrophe goes on...

Danzig, Germany, 1924. Oskar Matzerath is born with an intellect beyond his infancy. As he witnesses the hypocrisy of adulthood and the irresponsibility of society, Oskar rejects both, and, at his third birthday, refuses to grow older. Caught in a baffling state of perpetual childhood, Oskar lashes out at all he surveys with piercing screams and frantic poundings on his tin drum, while the unheeding, chaotic world marches onward to the madness and folly of World War II. Honored with the Palme d`Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, Volker Schlöndorff`s The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) is a truly visionary adaptation of Nobel laureate Günter Grass` acclaimed novel, an unforgettable fantasia of surreal imagery, striking eroticism, and unflinching satire.