Tin Drum World Cinema #5, The Blu-ray

LE TAMBOUR

When Oskar Matzerath (the extraordinary David Bennent, just twelve at the time) receives a tin drum for his third birthday, he vows to stop growing there and then and woe betide anyone who tries to take his beloved drum away from him, as he has a banshee shriek that can shatter glass. As a result, he retains a permanent childs-eye perspective on the rise of Nazism as experienced through petit-bourgeois life in his native Danzig, the free city claimed by both Germany and Poland whose invasion in 1939 helped kick-start World War II.With the help of Luis Buuels favourite screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrire, director Volker Schlndoff turns Gnter Grass magical-realist masterpiece into a carnivalesque frenzy of bizzarre, grotesque yet unnervingly compelling images as Oskar turns his increasingly jaded eye and caustic tongue on the insane follies of the adult world that he refuses to join.