IMDB link
Running time: 2h 22min
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
Written by Volker Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, Franz Seitz
Starring David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler
The Nazis, for all their faults, inspired a lot of creative work, such as Günter Grass’s 1959 novel Die Blechtrommel and its 1979 film adaptation, which, unlike the Nazis, were quite successful. This was my first viewing of the film — I have not read the book — and while it is undoubtedly memorable and well-made, it is also a conflicting and difficult movie to just enjoy. Oskar, a young German/Polish boy born in the 1920s, decides he does not want to grow up — and then, magically, does not. Thus, he lives through World War II as a perpetual child, and the audience gets to view some of the horrors of that time through him.