That boy refuses to grow up
Just saw Volker Schlndorff's Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum). The film is based on Gnter Grass' first book in his Danzig (Gdańsk) trilogy about Kashubian life in Poland before the Nazi invasion. It follows the life of Oskar Matzerath the three year old who refuses to grow up. His refusal is a statement of protest against the grown up world. Disgusted by the hypocrisy around him, he orchestrates his own fall from the cellar stairs causing a head injury which arrests his growth. The voiceover chills you as he announces, in his shrill voice, just before his jump:
"That day, reflecting on the grown-up world and my own future, I decided to call a halt - to stop growing then and there and remain a three year old, a gnome, once and for all."
Oskar (David Bennent) has the most wild ferocious eyes as he leaps from the stairs. It is an amazing political statement. Schlndorff, (who also made the fantastic "Lost Honor of Katrina Blum") showing the disgust felt by Oskar is really referring to the middle class and its aspirations of domination. This is the class that had been held out by the bourgeois, by the aristocracy on the one hand, who despised them and the proletariat who considered them the worst enemy of the socialist revolution. Despised by everybody, they happily rallied around the Nazis in hope of fulfilling their aspirations of domination. This his how they became the force of Hitler's movement, only to be disappointed later.
Sound familiar? The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in India rose exactly the same way after regurgitating some nonsensical garbage called Hindutva and the Indian middle class gleefully sucked on it. Even today, shopkeepers, merchants and traders are the strongest support base of the BJP, and they bank on this middle class for their return.
Here's a promo of the film 
In another scene, Oskar has just seen dwarfs perform at a circus and he has wandered towards their tents. He strikes a conversation with an old dwarf named Bebra.
Bebra: Are you an artist too?
Oskar: Not really...
(He beats his drum and lets out a shrill shriek which breaks a few glass bulbs)
Oskar: although as you see, I can lay claim to a certain artistry.
Bebra: Bravo, Bravo. You must join us, you must!
Oskar: You know, Mr. Bebra... to tell the truth, I prefer to be a member of the audience, and let my little art flower in secret.
Bebra: My dear Oskar, trust an experienced colleague. Our kind must never sit in the audience. Our kind must perform and run the show, or the others will run us. The others are coming. They will occupy the fairgrounds, they will stage torchlight parades, build rostrums, fill the rostrums, and from those rostrums preach our destruction.
That of course applies to our time just as aptly. Each generation seems to go through some kind of ritual of discovering sin for the first time. Probably because we often fail to connect ourselves to history and rarely realize that the past is always here. History is not an event but a chain. The Tin Drum, released in 1979, remains a timeless masterpiece, yet 30 years later is more progressively contemporary than most of so called modern cinema. Get a hold of it. If you have a social gathering film festival like the BRTFF, in Bombay, you can get in touch and we could arrange a viewing.
