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LITTLE BASTARD

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 film was

Die Blechtrommel / The Tin Drum (1979)

This is a beautiful film about a really nasty little boy. So nasty that he decides not to grow any larger when he is three. Some mental trick for a three year old. Talk about precocity.

It is not meant to be believable of course. But it is somehow unacceptable because the film exists in a realistic plane in all other respects. Not only that, real midgets are brought in to confuse the idea of retarded growth. They say that they decided too but I don't believe it because our boy is a little boy (worried about corruption of a minor while filming, don't watch this). And so on. The mind wanders.

The action is around the first battle of WWII in Danzig. Very good so far. It is an ideal way of showing the conflicts that existed and, a historical sense, it is illuminating. I am reading about WWII just now and, I have to say, that I was informed by this film at that level.

This happens in the middle so we see events leading up to it. The event itself where our little bastard (actually he has two fathers and that does make sense as we don't know which is the real one so he is a bastard either way you look at it) is front and center. One 'father' is a Pole--well the other one is too but he masquerades as a German. There was a lot of that.

Are you lost?

No matter.

If you follow my advice you will not waste your time on this movie although, if you have time to spare, you might be amused and informed but you won't 'get' the message.

Oh yes. This is based on the novel written by the later disgraced Günter Grass. He was a leftist who was actually in the SS as a very young man. Again, it was the coverup, not the crime that caused the uproar.

My god. This labyrinthine discussion leads to one conclusion.

I didn't like the movie.

I will rate this a 1 out of Netflix5 because I got tired after the middle and skipped the bullshit.

Labels: best films