MovieChat Forums > Die Blechtrommel (1980) Discussion > A Flawed Film

A Flawed Film

posted 17 years ago by kincaid-5
7 replies | jump to latest

It's not usually considered proper to criticize a film by reference to the book it's taken from, but here we have to. They set out to put the book on film, but they failed to respect the difference between the two forms. (And with Gunter Grass so heavily involved, no one could point out that they were being untrue to the book.)

For those who haven't read the novel, they chopped off the last third, and in so doing they lost the "frame." The frame is that it's ten years after the War, what's left of the family has relocated to the West and had new adventures, and Oskar is telling this story while confined in a hospital for the criminally insane. (Hence the voice-over narration.) We're given enough of an independent check to know that it's not a straight hallucination, but it's clear from the start that we're not supposed to trust everything Oskar tells us; he frequently gives one version of an incident but then backs up and says it wasn't really like that -- though we shouldn't trust his second version either.

You can do that in a novel, but it's very hard to do on film, where you have to put something in front of the audience and ask them to believe it. The filmmakers proceed like they don't realize there's a problem and give us a literal presentation of what was never meant to be taken literally.

The adult, post-war Oskar is crippled with guilt at all the harm he has caused -- if you thought he was nasty in the film, in the book he's worse -- and that colors everything he tells us. When people ask why anyone should care about such a dreadful little boy, they haven't gotten that this is what the adult Oskar thinks of himself, looking back. (Interesting, now that we know Grass himself had some "ghosts.") The film fails to convey that.

It also didn't help that so many people assume that Oskar is making some sort of protest against what's happening to Germany. In reality, a perpetual toddler who screams and breaks things when he doesn't get his own way, even though he's old enough to know better, Oskar IS what's happening to Germany. And looking back after the War, he knows it -- to the extent that he tries to pretend he's not German at all, but Polish.

That's all in the book, but they fail to translate it to the screen. They're too busy putting the book on the screen as a straight story without stopping to show us what it's all about. So I call it a flawed film.

[–] am_buglet_82 17 years ago

I agree with you to some extent, but I wouldn't actually use the word "flawed".
More like "incomplete".

I read the book a couple years after I first saw the movie, and the book actually makes me like Oskar better, because we get an inside view.
We see what's going on inside him, and although we do have the voiceover for the movie, we can't understand the emotions conveyed by it.

I like the movie, but I would like it better if it had been like a miniseries, adn the whole book had been put into the movie.
There are some characters from the book I would have liked to see in the movie.

-Amanda

"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in storybooks written by rabbits"

[–] kpjf 17 years ago

It's interesting that you say this, as on the criterion 2nd disc, the director talks about the novel and how oskar ends up in the mental hospital. He adds, that along with the author of the novel they tried writing screenplay for up to oskar's 80th birthday and the fall of the berlin wall, but says it stayed a 'project'. Nonetheless i think they could of shot a few scenes of oskar in hospital letting the audience know how he ended up, or at the very least seen oskar in the mental hospital writing the book about his life and ended it there.

[–] kincaid-5 10 years ago

bump

http://redkincaid.com

[–] moilane 9 years ago

They set out to put the book on film, but they failed to respect the difference between the two forms. (And with Gunter Grass so heavily involved, no one could point out that they were being untrue to the book.)

I wonder what makes you assume they set out to put the whole book on film? Sure looks to me they - including the author himself - were quite happy to just adapt some of the story, since they obviously felt it was not feasible to include the whole "frame" of the book. And even with a simpler frame, managed to make one of the top 100 movies in the history of the universe (in my book, of course).

In fact, wouldn't that make them quite successful in respecting the differences?

[–] TheMichael 9 years ago

I agree with this guy: You can't define a movie to be flawed just for not including a part. Film adaptations don't need to serve as an exact translation of a book. As a matter of fact, just like you can't translate certain feelings from a book to a film, (because of inner monologues and such), the same goes the other way: movies create moments and feelings a book can never have. Movies become their own entity and must be defined by rules outside of being what was in the book. You judge a book by it's story and how it is written. You judge a movie by it's story and SO MUCH MORE HARDER AND COMPLICATED ASPECTS.

Not everything written in books is golden either.

[–] kincaid-5 9 years ago

I agree, of course, that a film does not have to follow the book from which it's taken, but here it's fairly clear that they were trying to put the book on the screen. A lot of it makes no sense except by reference to the book; you don't know who half the people in some of the scenes are otherwise.

Seen solely as a film, it's a rather pointless and even nonsensical story about an exceedingly unpleasant little boy who refuses to grow up and runs around having crazy adventures that get other people hurt -- including killing all three of his parents -- all the while he utters gassy comments on himself and the world. We're given no particular reason to care about Oskar and a lot of reasons not to like him. Why bother?

The story from the book is about a guilt-ridden man who can't figure out who he is and where he fits after everything he's done. He tries to make sense of it all by telling this story of his life, but he's never clear, even with himself, on what really happened. He'd like to tell himself that he's a Pole, one of the good guys, but he can't escape his German-ness, and the responsibility that entails.

The book is a great work of literature. The film, though it has a very good "look," is a series of scenes from the book -- which may or may not have happened -- strung together with no particular coherence.

http://redkincaid.com

[–] slimone (7996) 5 years ago

The movie ends much differently than the book. The book's ending: After a virtuoso performance, a record company talent seeker discovers Oskar the jazz drummer and offers a contract. Oskar soon achieves fame and riches. One day while walking through a field he finds a severed finger: the ring finger of Sister Dorothea, who has been murdered. He then meets and befriends Vittlar. Oskar allows himself to be falsely convicted of the murder and is confined to an insane asylum, where he writes his memoirs.

Actually I found the movie somewhat boring.