#82- The Tin Drum

Quick recap: A little boy, growing up during World War II, receives a tin drum for his 3rd birthday. After seeing how the adults around him are incredibly stupid, he decides to throw himself down the stairs in order to stop growing. That was a completely true recap by the way, and not at ALL what the movie is about.

The birth scene that gives me nightmares all on its own

Fun (?) fact: Oklahoma County……in Oklahoma, banned this movie in 1997 based off of one controversial scene. All copies were confiscated and one person was even threatened with prosecution for being in possession of the film. The ruling was overturned later on.

disturbing image #2

My thoughts: So. I’m not really sure what Germany has against me, but The Tin Drum is now the second film from that country to traumatize me and make me rethink why I am even doing this project. For starters:

1. The opening scene features a man running away from police. He spies a woman in a potato field and begs her to let him hide underneath her skirts so he won’t get caught. She obliges and ends up sitting on him and they have sex.

2. The child conceived from that encounter grows up and falls for two men. She sleeps with both of them on a continuous basis so it’s not really known who Oskar’s father is.

3. Oskar, 3 years old at the time , makes himself fall down the cellar stairs so that he may never have to grow up. Throughout the whole movie he carries around a tin drum and beats on it when he is unhappy or angry.

4. There is a scene where a horse head washes up on shore and one of the men takes the eels from the head and cooks them. He is then hurt when his wife refuses to eat Rotted Horse Head Eels.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Now you are probably thinking to yourself 1) Those crazy Germans and their movies! and 2) This won’t stop me from celebrating Oktoberfest and 3) why is Oklahoma so uptight?

Bear with me here: The boy who plays Oskar was 11 years old at the time of the film. During the film, Oskar has the body of a 3 year old but chronologically he gets older. So that means that when he becomes a teenager, he has sexual desires. Even though he looks like a 3 year old. See where I’m going with this? So, there are a few scenes where Oskar falls in love with a 15 year old who comes to live with his father after his mother dies (she became obsessed with eating raw fish after the eel incident and got food poisoning). Although nothing is shown explicitly, it is insinuated he (the 11 year old playing a chronological 16 year old but looking like a 3 year old) performs oral sex on the girl and he can be seen under the covers having sex with her a little later on. They conceive a child together through this.

I’m still not sure what the meaning of the movie is. I read that it had something to do with the infantilism of adults and the Nazi party, but I felt like I would be smited (smote?) if I thought about this film too long so I stopped analyzing it.

Final review: 1/5. There is probably some watch list out there for people who enjoyed this movie. Not falling for that one!

Up next: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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#69- Brazil

Quick recap: Sam Lowry holds a low level government job in the not so distant dystopian future. He’s happy with things the way they are, except for the bizarre dreams he has of rescuing a beautiful woman. Once he realizes she is in fact real, he makes it his life mission to find and save her.

Fun (?) fact: Terry Gilliam, the director of Brazil, was involved in a long battle against a studio company not wanting to release his film. At one point, Gilliam took out a full page ad in Daily Variety asking when the studio was going to release his film.

That’s the way to get things done

My thoughts: Cool story bro: On the day I was going to watch this movie, I had somehow gotten Billy Joel’s ‘My Life’ stuck in my head .(Just kidding. I know exactly how it was done. BLACK MAGIC) After leaving the theater, the curse was lifted and now I have the theme to Brazil stuck instead. It’s not as bad as Billy Joel, because, let’s face it, nothing is. Also, there were a ton of variations to the theme so it’s almost like a new song each time.

So, besides this being one of my husband’s favorite movies (not one of several husbands. One of several movies), I love Monty Python and therefore, knew I would enjoy Brazil. The movie did not disappoint, but I admit to being a little confused by the whole thing. I hadn’t read up on the movie beforehand so I didn’t know that it is commonly characterized as a ‘dystopian satire’. It’s a totally apt description. The very beginning of the film involves an innocent man being whisked away from his family, presumably to be executed. I was a little surprised by the violence, but then one of the officers makes the wife sign away her husband, making sure she signs in the correct spots. She is then given a receipt and everyone leaves. The woman is hysterical by what has happened, yet she stops crying long enough to sign the forms correctly. Another example happens when Lowry goes out to dinner with his mother and while they are eating, a terrorist attack occurs in the restaurant. As people lay dying and bleeding to death, Lowry’s table continues eating as if nothing has happened. The waiter even brings over a partition so they won’t be bothered by the gruesome scene. I am blown away how Gilliam was able to blend the dystopian scene with satire so seamlessly.

The dystopian society itself interested me tremendously. In this ‘retro future’, everyone is materialistic, and yet they are surrounded by the shoddiest things. Lowry’s apartment, for example, is fully automated so that he doesn’t have to lift a finger in order to get ready for work. However, nothing works right: His alarm is set wrong, he has to plug in several wires just to answer the phone, and his breakfast is ruined when the machine pours the coffee all over the toast. Also, as a major plot point, there are these pipes that are everywhere. When his heating system breaks down, Lowry phones the Central Services line to get someone to fix it. Instead, a man intercepts the call and does the work much more efficiently. It is at this point that Lowry’s eyes are open. Another characteristic of this society is that paperwork rules all. Hardly anything gets done because of the vast amount of paperwork involved. Innocent people are routinely killed because the government believes the paperwork is infallible.

I realize I haven’t really touched on the plot of this movie very much, and there is a reason for that. I feel like this movie will be best be enjoyed if you have no idea what you are getting into. Everything was a surprise and I had no idea how it would all end. The ending, in fact, is one of the main controversies with Terry Gilliam and the movie studio. I feel like the less said, the better about this one.

Final review: 1/5 and 5/5. Much like Moulin Rouge, I imagine Brazil to be polarizing. Many people will dismiss it as too weird, but I respectfully disagree. I would love to watch it again to see what else I pick up on, humor-wise.

Up next: Cleo from 5 to 7

#50- Funny Games

Quick recap: Two psychotic men hold a wealthy family hostage and then torture them for several hours until they are all dead. In retrospect, watching this movie late at night wasn’t one of my smarter ideas but you live and learn, right? WRONG.

just about the only scene in the film that doesn’t make me want to curl up into a ball.

Fun (?) Fact: Director Michael Haneke has stated that ‘Funny Games’ was not meant to be a horror film, but instead a message about violence in media. Message received, thank you very much. I’m curling back into my ball now.

My thoughts: It’s not often that a movie makes me really reflect on my life choices and what has lead me to this point to have to sit through something as awful as ‘Funny Games’. Before I begin my (I predict) rambling observation, I’ll preface by saying that I have no qualms spoiling the movie because I believe in sharing misery.

From the moment Peter enters Anna’s house, a knot in my stomach grew. I had already read the synopsis of the film beforehand and I knew the ending but I think waiting for it to happen made it so much worse. I found myself relieved once it was revealed that Paul, the other psycho, had murdered the family dog. Not a normal thing to be relieved about, but I was grateful that I didn’t have to watch the death. That turned out to be the absolute worse thing because I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of the young boy crumpled up in the corner after being shot to death, his blood splattered everywhere. Somehow, not watching the murder but seeing the aftermath made the situation so much worse and more horrifying. Looking back, very little of the torture scenes were shown. Most of the horror came from discovering what evil thing would be next. An example of this was when the young boy, George, discovers that Peter and Paul have also murdered a family living next to his. No bodies are shown, but as George looks down a staircase, he can see a little girl’s sock covered foot.

I think it was at that scene that I really had to stop and question if i should continue watching the movie or not. I knew the young son would be murdered as well as the rest of the family eventually and I had already had enough suspense for one night. I made the decision to keep watching because I knew that if I didn’t, it might haunt me forever. I found myself hoping that the family would be murdered quickly so I wouldn’t have to sit through anymore sadistic games, and that brings me to another example of psychological torture for the audience: Paul talks directly to the audience watching the movie. In the beginning of the end, he bets the family that they won’t survive past 9 in the morning and then turns to the camera and says that he thinks we will be rooting for the family to survive. In another scene, Anna escapes right before she is about to be murdered and manages to shoot Peter. Paul screams and looks for the tv remote to rewind the scene and bring Peter back to life. It works and both men continue their games. Paul also turns around and winks at the camera a few times, like he is letting us in on a secret and after awhile, I felt personally involved. It wasn’t like I felt like I was committing the murders, but I somehow felt responsible for what was happening and yet helpless to do anything.

The movie ends with Peter and Paul throwing Anna into the water and I once again felt relief that it was finally over. But then they docked the boat and showed up at a neighbor’s house, presumably to continue their spree. Thankfully, the audience is set free and we don’t have to witness anything else.

Final Review: 1/5. The director supposedly said that if this movie was successful in any way, it was because the audience didn’t understand his message. Just in case Haneke is reading this blog, I’d like to let him know that I’d give this a negative score if I could.

Nightmares?: Oh,yes. It wasn’t the fear that someone would break into the house, but just nightmares about death in general and STILL being unable of getting that image of the dead boy out of my head.

One of those times I really wish ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind’ had been real

Up Next: this movie broke me. I may need to watch something lighthearted and abandon HorrorFest for now. Way to go, Haneke. This is why we can’t have nice things.

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#41- El Topo

Quick recap: Oh, boy. So there’s this cowboy, called El Topo, who is sort of like God? And he travels around with his naked son as they go around the country killing bad guys. Simple enough, right? But then this girl shows up and El Topo calls her Mara and they do crazy stuff and she convinces him to fight 4 gun masters, as if that won’t end badly. And he does because he wants to keep having sex with her. Being the badass that he is, he indeed conquers all gun masters but does so by trickery and feels guilty about it because he is God. Or something. And then to top it off, Mara runs away with some chick with a man’s voice who shoots him all stigmata style before they run away together. End scene. The second part is even weirder and it involves little people and disabled people and El Topo getting involved in a cultist village and knocking up some girl. My brain exploded at this point.

Fun (?) Trivia: Alejandro Jodorowsky, who played El Topo, cast his young son in the movie to play the naked kid running around in the desert. That’s sort of a messed up thing to do and apparently Jodorowsky felt bad about it at some point and invited the boy to the backyard to dig up a toy and picture of his mother, just like the beginning scene. He then said ‘Now you are 8 and you have permission to be a kid’. Still doesn’t quite make up for your dad showing the world your junk at 6 but it’s something, I suppose.

My thoughts: 5 minutes into the film and I think I literally yelled out, ‘WTF!’ as El Topo guides his naked son among the bloody dead villagers. They come across a man who is dying and being the good father that he is, hands the gun to the boy to put the man out of his misery. After that there is some crazy nonsense with the bandits doing all sorts of sadistic stuff to a group of monks and I think at one point I just shrugged my shoulders and told myself to just stop thinking because it wasn’t worth it.

This is the sort of movie that screams, ‘art house’. Jodorowsky is some sort of crazy intellectual guy and put a ton of references to religion into this film of which I caught maybe 10%. It was only after reading the Wikipedia page for this movie that I realized the 4 gun masters represented different Eastern religions. I still don’t know what they are and as I have mentioned, my mind exploded at some point so I don’t care to look it up.

As a whole, El Topo is disturbing. Everything from the nudity to buckets of blood, to the exploitation of the disabled and little people. I knew at some level I was supposed to watch this all the while stroking my fake goatee and taking long puffs of my cigar and every few minutes leaning back and saying, ‘ah,yes. Clever fellow, this Jodorowsky’. But there were too many scenes that I just couldn’t get past. El Topo reeks of pretentiousness, and to find out John Lennon financed its release makes all the more sense.

In order to find some sort of positive in this movie, I will admit that I thought the ending was rather fitting, as El Topo set himself on fire and his son donned the black suit and became the new El Topo. I also liked that last scene because it meant the movie was OVER.

I’m just going to leave this here and let it haunt your dreams.

Final review: 1/5. I understand why this film was included on the list but I’ll be damned if I have to sit through it again.

Up next: Batman

at least he can play a mean flute

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1001 Movie Nights

Tag Archives: 1/5

#82- The Tin Drum

#69- Brazil

#50- Funny Games

#41- El Topo

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