The Tin Drum

The film centers on Oskar Matzerath, a boy born and raised in the Free City of Danzig prior to and during World War II, who recalls the story's events as an unreliable narrator. Oskar is the son of a half-Polish Kashubian woman, Agnes Bronski, who is married to a German chef named Alfred Matzerath. Agnes secretly carries on an affair with Jan, a Polish Post Office worker and her cousin. Alfred and Jan are friends, and Alfred mostly acts willfully ignorant of his wife's infidelity. Oskar's parentage is uncertain, though he believes he is Jan's son. The film begins with Agnes' conception by Joseph Kolaizcek, a petty criminal in rural Kashubia (located in modern-day Poland). He hides underneath the skirts of a young woman named Anna Bronski and has sex with her, and she tries to hide her emotions as the German troops searching for him pass close by. She later gives birth to Agnes. Joseph evades the authorities for a year, but when they find him again, he jumps into a lake and is never seen again. Oskar speculates that he either drowned or escaped to America and became a millionaire. In 1927, on Oskar's third birthday, he is given a tin drum. Reflecting on the foolish antics of his drunken parents and friends, he resolves to stop growing and throws himself down the cellar stairs. From that day on, he does not grow at all. Oskar discovers he can shatter glass with his voice, an ability he often uses when he is upset. On one occasion, he uses his drumming to cause the attendants of a Nazi rally to start dancing a waltz. During a visit to the circus, Oskar befriends Bebra, a performing dwarf who chose to stop growing at age ten. When Alfred, Agnes, Jan, and Oskar are on an outing to the beach, they see an eel-picker collecting eels from a horse's head used as bait. The sight makes Agnes vomit repeatedly. Alfred buys some of the eels and prepares them for dinner that night. When he insists that Agnes eat them, she becomes distraught and retreats to the bedroom. Jan enters and comforts her, all within earshot of Oskar, who is hiding in the closet. She calmly returns to the dinner table and eats the eels. Over the next few days, she binges on fish. Oskar's grandmother helps reveal that Agnes is worried her pregnancy is due to her relations with Jan. In anger, Agnes vows that the child will never be born. She dies shortly thereafter, seemingly from accumulated stress. At the funeral, Oskar encounters Sigismund Markus, the kindly Jewish toy seller who supplies him with replacement drums, and who was also in love with Agnes. Markus is ordered by two of the mourners to leave because he is Jewish; Nazism is on the rise, and the Jewish and Polish residents of Danzig are under increasing pressure. Markus later commits suicide after his shop is vandalized and a synagogue is burned down by SA men. On 1 September 1939, Oskar and Jan go looking for Kobyella, who can repair Oskar's drum. Jan slips into the Polish Post Office, despite a Nazi cordon, and participates in an armed standoff against the Nazis. During the ensuing battle, Kobyella is fatally shot, and Jan is wounded. They play Skat until Kobyella dies, and the Germans capture the building. Oskar is taken home, while Jan is arrested and later executed. Alfred hires Maria, a sixteen-year-old German girl, to work in his shop, and Oskar seduces her. When he later discovers Alfred having sex with her, he bursts into the room and makes Alfred ejaculate inside her (when he was expected to pull out, to avoid getting her pregnant), causing Maria to become angry at Alfred when he blames Oskar for the inadvertent insemination. While rinsing her vagina in an attempt to remove the deposited semen, Maria and Oskar fight, and he hits her in the groin. She later gives birth to a son, who Oskar is convinced is his. Oskar also has a brief sexual relationship with Lina Greff, the wife of the local grocer and scoutmaster. It is implied that Lina was sexually frustrated, as her husband preferred to spend more time with the Hitler Youth boys. Lina's husband later commits suicide after a neighbor catches him "playing" with those boys and reports him to the Nazi authorities. During World War II, Oskar meets Bebra and Roswitha, another dwarf performer in Bebra's successful troupe. Oskar decides to join them, using his glass-shattering voice as part of the act. Oskar and Roswitha have an affair, but she is killed by artillery fire during the Allied invasion of Normandy while they are on tour. Oskar returns home. Much of Danzig has been destroyed, and the Russians are fast approaching. He gives Maria's three-year-old son Kurt a tin drum like his own. Some Russian soldiers break into the cellar where Oskar's family and Lina are hiding. They gang-rape Lina, and Alfred is killed by a soldier after he swallows and chokes violently on his Nazi party pin, apparently betrayed by Oskar. Alfred's shop is taken over by Mariusz Fajngold, a Jewish survivor of Treblinka, who arranges a modest funeral for Alfred. During Alfred's burial, Oskar decides to grow up and throws his drum into the grave. As he does, Kurt throws a stone at his head, causing Oskar to fall into the grave as well. Afterwards, an attendee announces that Oskar is growing again, though he is severely injured. Oskar, Maria, and Kurt leave for Germany, but his grandmother stays in Poland.

Plot from The Tin Drum (film)CC BY-SA 4.0