Die Blechtrommel (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979)

The screen adaptation of Günter Grass's acclaimed novel about a preternaturally developmentally arrested three-year-old in wartime Danzig picked up a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar amongst other plaudits, and you can see how it sold easily to foreign voting panels eager to award Germans mocking the posturings of Nazism through allegory. But that was thirty years ago, and you have to ask whether the device has stood the test of time.
In short, no: The Tin Drum scores on arresting imagery and absurdism, turning grim events into high farce, but fails to engage emotionally at a deeper level. The Damien-like Oskar, marching along breaking glass with his shrieking and banging his beloved drum incessantly is not effective either as a counterpoint to the horror or as a powerless everyman. He's too much of an autistic circus freak to care about, and since the story is through his eyes, the grotesquery shown struggles to translate to its implied message.

5/10