#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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#73- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Quick recap: Jeanne Dielman is a single mother who spends her days meticulously cleaning the house,cooking, shopping, and prostituting herself out as a source of income. That’s the entire movie. All 3 hours and 21 minutes.

On the edge of my seat, wondering if she would peel the potatoes in time for dinner!

Fun (?) fact: The director, Chantal Akerman, used a female only crew to make the film. She later said that it didn’t work out as well as she had hoped it would, because she was not in charge of which woman would be hired.

I think the was the point in the film when I started to go insane, watching her mold the meatloaf 10 billion times.

My thoughts: It’s an understatement to say that I dreaded watching this movie. For one, it’s FRENCH. Secondly, it’s labeled under the genre ‘art house’, and finally, it was 3 hours and 21 minutes long. And for 3 hours and 15 minutes, I had to sit through watching a woman clean her house and cook food. FOR 3 HOURS AND 15 MINUTES, YOU GUYS.

The movie opens with Jeanne Dielman letting a client into her home so they can have sex. My hopes were high at this point, that this would be more interesting than I had hoped. Dielman leads the man down the hall, closes the door, and……..that’s it. No sounds, nothing. The two emerge after it has gotten dark. The man pays Dielman and tells her that she will see him next week. Dielman then goes back to her routine of cleaning and cooking until her son comes home. Once again, my hopes were raised as the two of them sat down for dinner, but nobody said a word. Instead, I was treated to 15 minutes of people eating soup and then eating potatoes with stew. It didn’t take long for me to catch on that this was how the whole movie would play out.

Jeanne Dielman also taught me that I eat soup the wrong way

In all fairness, I actually started to enjoy the film. As grating as it was to watch chores being played out in real time, I could fathom even less having to do that EVERY DAY. And as annoying as it was to sit through 3 hours and 15 minutes of this woman’s routine, it was necessary to understand her oppression. It just wouldn’t have worked to have a montage of Dielman doing her daily chores and looking mournfully at the screen while some sad song played. The only way to understand was to live it. It also made the scene where her routine starts unraveling (she drops a spoon) more noticeable. I appreciate that the director didn’t have to spell it out for the audience, but trusted that after sitting through 3 hours and 21 minutes of this woman’s life, we would figure it out.

The last 10 or so minutes of the film account for the only action to take place. SPOILER ALERT( not that you are going to run out and watch this, but just in case), during a session with a client, Dielman orgasms. After a conversation with her son earlier in the movie, I gather that this might have been the first ever for her. I suppose it empowers her or something because as she is putting her clothes on and the man is lying on the bed, she calmly goes over to him and stabs him to death with a pair of scissors. The last scene in the film is of her sitting in the darkened dining room, with blood on her shirt and hands and I think she is smiling.

This film is considered to be one of the best feminist films out there, and I suppose I agree, although I don’t have much knowledge on the subject. Halfway through the movie, I started to become genuinely concerned for Dielman. I wondered what legacy she will have left, years from now. Will she only be seen as a caring mother? Probably. For me, the bleakest scenes came on the last day, as she sat quietly with nothing to do. It was as if her routine was her entire life: her enjoyment, her hobbies, and her passion. So if she didn’t have these routines, she was nothing. I’m not sure what to take from that, but at least I understood the feminist movement in the 70’s a little better.

Final review: 4/5. This was a hard one to pin down because there is no way in hell that you could pay me to sit through this again, yet I still enjoyed the movie.

Up nextM:r. Deeds Goes to Town

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#72- Kramer vs. Kramer

Quick recap: Joanna Kramer, unhappy in her marriage, chooses to leave her son and husband to find herself. Her husband, a workaholic, is left with the full responsibility of a child. He slowly builds up a new life for him and his son until Joanna comes back into the picture and sues for custody.

Fun(?) fact: The ice cream scene between Billy and his father was completely improvised, but the director loved it so much he kept it in the film.

My thoughts: A few years ago, I decided to try and watch all Academy award winners. Kramer vs. Kramer was first on my list and I remember enjoying it but not really identifying with it. Fast forward 4 years and I am married with a 4 year old boy. It was interesting to find myself almost unable to watch some scenes because now I was identifying with it too much. I understood the perspective of the father, the mother and even the kid. It would’ve been easy to leave it at that: a sad, but realistic portrayal of divorce. But the more I thought about, the more complicated everything was.

So first of all, there is the character of Ted Kramer. Before I go any further, I need to point out how realistic all the performances were. Although the subject is an emotional one, all of the characters showed enough restraint so the audience could identify but not feel awkward. As for Ted Kramer, his character is the typical father seen during that time period. He devotes his time to his work and that is his way to show he loves his family. It is also the reason his wife leaves him. I really enjoyed watching the transformation as Kramer learned to care for his son, and it was especially evident when comparing the first time the two make French toast together to the last time. As was portrayed in the movie, Kramer wasn’t a ‘bad husband’: no abuse or neglect. But he also wasn’t very sympathetic towards his wife’s needs. Kramer spends the entire movie angry at his ex-wife and it isn’t until the very last scene that I believe he sees her as a real person, not just the mother of his child.

I didn’t pay much attention to the character of Joanna Kramer the first time around, but found her much more fascinating and complicated this time. It’s very easy to cast her off as the villain in the film, seeing as how she willingly left her child to take care of herself. It seems such a cold thing to do and an open and shut case as to who should get Billy. I guess I am speaking as someone who lives in 2014, but I think the health of the mother is just as vital to a child as physically being there. Joanna was depressed and could no longer handle motherhood. She had no other job and it didn’t seem many friends, so her main source of conversation came from a 6 year old. There are many women who could do that, no problem. But there are many more who are still good mothers, yet need the balance and the chance to do something for themselves. In this case, it took Joanna leaving for her to get back on track. It might also have been the best solution for her to gain some sanity. I disagree with her fighting custody, but that was also the norm of the tim- for the mother to have primary custody. The final scene was heart wrenching, as Joanna understood where Billy really belonged. In the best interest of the child, Billy needed both parents. Joanna made the decision to leave, but that doesn’t mean she ever stopped loving her child and wanting him.

Final review: 3/5. Almost a 4, but I felt the courtroom scene to be a little silly. When the lawyer grilled Ted about losing his job because he missed a deadline, he was trying to show that he couldn’t be relied on. But the reason he missed the deadline was to take care of his son, therefore proving that he put his child before anything else.

Up next: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

#66- Murmur of the Heart

Quick recap: Laurent is a 15 year old boy who desperately wants to lose his virginity(don’t they all?).IMDb describes this movie as a ‘jolly coming of age story’, which I totally agree with, except for the incest.

Fun (?) fact: Director Louis Malle says the movie is mostly autobiographical, except for the sexual relations with his mother. What a relief!

My thoughts: So, Murmur of the Heart is a French film. I feel like it’s important to point this out because I just don’t believe something like this would’ve ever been ok to American audiences. When looking at it from my perspective as an American girl, every scene seemed outrageous- from the young boys smoking, to the priest coming on to Laurent, and of course, the incest. But maybe if I had been French, only the last scene would’ve been shocking. I recognize that a different culture is at play here so there is no point in judging that, but it’s also impossible to ignore my natural bias.

For starters, I never really warmed up to the character of Laurent. Once again, it might be my bias, but I could never identify with him. Through the entirety of the film, I felt like I was watching something that wasn’t meant for me. As a girl, I have my own share of stories of what it was like in high school as I matured and the awkwardness of it all. And how intimidating it was when I got to college and it felt like all of the guys had so much more experience than I did. But then while watching this movie I realized that a boy going through puberty was no walk in the park, either. For Laurent, it was even more rough having two older brothers constantly pushing him to lose his virginity. It was one of those moments where I felt like I was going ‘behind the scenes’ and entering into a world I knew nothing about.

Everyone seemed to have a relaxed attitude about sex in the film, which once again, seemed shocking to me but might be the norm elsewhere. The second half of the movie takes place in a sanitarium where Laurent recovers from a heart murmur (get it?!? He had a legit medical condition but it was also his symbolic heart! So. Deep). Although he had suspected it, he learns that his mother is having an affair and he wishes her good luck in the endeavor. When she leaves for a couple of days to spend time with her lover, Laurent turns even less likable. There is one girl that he has set his sights on but when she rejects him he calls her a lesbian and becomes upset. Her parents witness the whole thing and even though they seemed offended they didn’t even have him thrown out. Then in a later scene, during Bastille Day, Laurent is back to talking to the girl. He continues to say offensive things and tries to kiss her, but she never really gets too angry about the whole thing. It was as if everyone had the attitude of ‘boys will be boys’.

And finally, we come to the scene with Laurent and his mother. I think the less said about it the better, although I will mention how grateful I was that the entire encounter was only implied and nothing was shown. After it is over, Laurent’s mother tells him that she will think of the time fondly, but that it will never happen again. Laurent seems satisfied by this and I guess the whole thing gave him courage because he ends up sneaking out and having sex with some girl. When he comes back into the room the next morning, he sees his entire family waiting on him. His father talks sternly to him at first but then everyone bursts out laughing, and the movie (thankfully) ends.

Final review: 2/5. On a positive note, I’ve been learning French and was quite pleased to recognize about 10 different words during the movie.

Up next: Kiss me Deadly

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1001 Movie Nights

Tag Archives: 1970’s

#82- The Tin Drum

#73- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#72- Kramer vs. Kramer

#66- Murmur of the Heart

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