AMD 6-Kahlin Naidoo

For AMD 6, I watched the Tin Drum. The story is about Oskar, the young son of a Kashubian family in a rural area Danzig. He humorously explains his lineage, which is illustrated by the camera, explaining how his grandfather being pursued by police, hid under his grandmother's skirts in a potato field. The film also shows Oskars personal view of his own birth, from the womb out, as he explains his displeasure at being born. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a tin drum. At this point, rather than growing up, he vows never to get any bigger. He throws himself down the basement stairs and stops growing. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that shatters glass. Oskar wears a sailor suit and a cap from the SMS Seydlitz. As Germany evolves towards Nazism and war in the 1930s the unaging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum. Only after the Soviet invasion at the end of the war, when only his grandmother and his half brother survive, does he decide to grow up. Oskar's progression from a child to a drum beating brat, to an adult mirrors Germany's progression from its creation in the 19th century, to tyrrany, to modern and dependable state.