After that, you're on your own, though - with its cavalcade of dwarfs and tin soldiers, and Schlöndorff's clever use of the colour red - it may equally be possible to read these events as the darkest of fairytales, a Grimm fable from (in 1979, still recent) German history. Bennent, an old head on young shoulders, is very carefully directed through one of the most disconcerting performances in all cinema, asked to act not his age (which is to say, not cute, as so many child actors are) but years and decades older than he actually was, which gives a real creepy charge to those scenes wherein the actor - playing the teenage Oskar, still in a childlike body - has his libido awakened by the young woman who comes to work in the family shop. The sight of Bennent nursing his "son" - the result of Oskar's soursweet sex games with sherbet - would be disturbing enough in itself to power a film on the Nazi era, but Schlöndorff keeps coming up with arresting setpieces that both illustrate and dramatise the sickness and stunted growth that plagued German society of the time.
The Tin Drum is available on DVD and Blu-Ray through Arrow Academy.
No comments:
Post a Comment