Word Salad

Film: Mediterranee
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Frequent readers of this blog will note that I almost never refer to The Book when it comes to a review. The goal of each of these reviews is more or less to coalesce my own feelings and observations about a given film as well as I can. In rare instances, though, I’m so completely nonplussed by a film that I have no other option. Mediterranee is exactly that sort of situation. I watched this thing and I have nothing original to say about it, which is difficult, considering I have a review to write.

Sadly, The Book doesn’t have much to say about it, either. Seriously, essentially it says that this is a film that Godard found influential and that he really liked. Great. So evidently, Mediterranee made it here because someone heard that Godard liked it, and thus it makes it on. This is one of the reasons that I sometimes think that The List needs an enema.

The German Title Starts with "Blech"

Film: Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I want you to think of all of the films you have seen in your life. Think of all of the children that appear in those films. Of all of those children, I want you to think of the most hateful and awful children you can. If you are not thinking of Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent) in Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), the reason is that you’ve never seen Die Blechtrommel. Seriously, this kid makes the white-haired evil space children from Village of the Damned look like a kindergarten. Oskar makes Damien look like a kid you’d have over to tea.

Sadly, this film centers on Oskar as the main character, and we’re tied to this hateful little bastard for more than 140 minutes. We learn initially of Oskar’s lineage, which starts when his grandmother (Tina Engel at this point, Berta Drews later on) hides a man escaping from the police under her voluminous skirts. Naturally in this situation, the man’s reaction is to have sex with her while the cops are walking past. This results in Agnes (Angela Winkler), who becomes Oskar’s mother. Oskar’s father is either Jan Bronski (Daniel Olbrychski), who happens to be Agnes’s cousin, or Alfred Matzerath (Mario Adorf), her husband. She’s sleeping with both men, though, so it doesn’t really matter.