The Tin Drum is, in fact, almost everything anybody could ask a film to be. It is strikingly original and continuously surprising.

In Volker Schlndorff's restored version of his 1979 classic, Oskar Matzerath emerges as a tragic anti-hero, whose lustful imagination and prodigious magical gifts can't shield him from the juggernaut of war.

Schlndorff has a tendency to sketch the rest of the cast as simple grotesques or symbols of decadence that are unconvincingly humanized in the final third.

The film is done with such grace and control that we quickly accept the singular perspective of this bizarre tale.