My BFF Wrap-Up: My Ranking

Starting in June 2016, I watched and reviewed every winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, or in short, Best Foreign Film (BFF), in reverse chronological order from the 2015 entry to the awards inception in 1947 (watching the 2016 winner at the end).  Part of the experiment was to see how many of these I would be able to find.  In most cases, I was able to borrow the DVD of each film from the Cuyahoga County Library system (a consistently top rated system in Northeast Ohio), and as things went further back in time, that meant using the inter-library systems CCL employs, SearchOhio and OhioLINK.  I did have to watch a couple on the dusty old VCR.  On two or three occasions when I couldn’t find the movie through the CCL system, I was able to get DVDs from the Cleveland Public Library.  Once I paid $2 to watch a movie on Amazon, and that was the grand total of money I spent on this project.  I did find a couple rare films online, having exhausted every other possibility.  Only once was I not able to find a film at all, at least with English subtitles, and that was 1950’s The Walls of Malapaga.  I watched it only in French with Portuguese subtitles, and decided to review it anyway.

My reviews were intended for people who don’t normally watch foreign films, a group that included me not all that long ago.  I found a lot of the movies worth watching, not just ones you might see at an art house, but movies I am convinced would have been mainstream American favorites had they been in English.  I also sat through a lot of tedious, self-admiring crap that got awards for having the right political or social view to the voters of the Academy.  But enough about The Sea Inside.  My goal was to make the reviews be entertaining, especially when the movie wasn't, and to give American viewer something they could relate to.

The list here is my amateurish attempt to rank what is perhaps the unrankable.  There are a variety of genres and so many different cultures represented here that it is almost unfair to compare them against each other.  But I did anyway, and the films are listed below from best to worst.  Click any movie title to read the review.  You can follow me on Twitter at @hawley5150.   

Enjoy!

1989, Cinema Paradiso, Italy

2006, The Lives of Others, Germany

1951, Rashomon, Japan

1998, Life Is Beautiful, Italy

1957, La Strada, Italy

1949, The Bicycle Thief, Italy

2011, A Separation, Iran

1975, Dersu Uzala, Soviet Union

1967, Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia

1947, Shoeshine, Italy

1964, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy

1963, 8½, Italy

2009, The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina

1972, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, France

1983, Fanny and Alexander, Sweden

1962, Sundays and Cybele, France

1965, The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia

1986, The Assault, The Netherlands

2000, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taiwan

1987, Babette's Feast, France

1960, The Virgin Spring, Sweden

2002 Nowhere in Africa, Germany

1958, My Uncle, France

1971, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Italy

1968, War and Peace, Soviet Union

1957, Nights of Cabiria, Italy

2007, The Counterfeiters, Austria

1974, Amarcord, Italy

1952, Forbidden Games, France

 
1961, Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden

2014, Ida, Poland

2016, The Salesman, Iran

1948, Monsieur Vincent, France

2008, Departures, Japan

2015, Son of Saul, Hungary

1970, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Italy

1985, The Official Story, Argentina

1969, Z, Algeria

1966, A Man and a Woman, France

1973, Day for Night, France

1990, Journey of Hope, Switzerland

1980, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Soviet Union

1982, Begin the Beguine, Spain

1993, Belle Époque, Spain

1959, Black Orpheus, France

1992, Indochine, France

1988, Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark

2005, Tsotsi, South Africa

1977, Madame Rosa, France

1981, Mephisto, Hungary

1954, Gate of Hell, Japan

2010, In a Better World, Denmark

1955, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi, Japan

2001, No Man's Land, Bosnia and Herzegovina

1976, Black and White and in Color, Ivory Coast

1979, The Tin Drum, West Germany

1996, Kolya, Czech Republic

1994,  Burnt by the Sun, Russia

1978, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, France

2012, Amour, France

2013, The Great Beauty, Italy

1997, Character, Netherlands

2014, The Sea Inside, Spain

1995, Antonia's Line, Netherlands

2003, The Barbarian Invasions, Canada

1991, Mediterraneo, Italy

1984, Dangerous Moves, France

1999, All About My Mother, Spain

1950, The Walls of Malapaga, France/Italy (not ranked)

FINE!

1979 Winner, The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum

Directed by:  Volker Schlöndorff

Distributor:  United Artists/World Pictures

Released:  May 1979

Country:  West Germany

Allegorical stories are okay by me as long as the underlying story stands on its own and makes sense.  If the Letter A on a dress or a talking pig stand for something beyond their literal meaning, then fine, as long as I can understand them as the Letter A or a talking pig.  The problem comes when the viewer needs a decoder ring or some sort of handbook with him to tell him what the symbolic meaning of whatever the allegory is.  The Wizard of Oz doesn’t have to be about bimetallism or 19th century American politics in order to be enjoyed.

Then there’s The Tin Drum.  Here are a few things we have going on here:

• Oskar is a little boy fathered by either a Pole or a German
• Though years go by, Oskar spends most of the movie as a toddler
• Oskar constantly bangs on his tin drum, needing replacement after replacement
• Oskar’s tin drum can make Nazis stop goose-stepping and start waltzing
• Oskar’s scream breaks glass more efficiently than Ella Fitzgerald’s scat

Jan, Alfred, and Oskar with his titular tin drum

Let me back up a step.  The Tin Drum is a story told by Oskar himself, starting with the sordid conception of his mother in Western Poland.  Oskar’s mother can’t make up her mind who she wants to be with following World War I, Alfred the German cook or her cousin Jan the Polish postal worker, so she marries Alfred and carries on with Jan.  Oskar comes along and on his third birthday, he gets as a present—you guessed it—a tin drum.  The title drum in hand, and with his family squabbling over whether it is better to remain Polish or embrace the new National Socialism sweeping the country next door, Oskar decides that falling down the stairs will allow him to stop from growing up and having to deal with life.

Oskar in super-creepy mode

The Swiss actor playing Oskar, David Bennett, plays the role with total creepiness.  Oskar seems sort of reasonable as he narrates the film, but when you see that look on his face when he screams, you just want to look away.  Oskar’s story is not a straight path—he tells about his two dads, his weird mother Agnes who eats raw fish likes it's M&Ms, and a dwarf in the circus with whom he strikes up a long-term friendship.  All of this is going on as the Nazis are gaining power in Germany.

World War II breaks out, further underscoring the differences between Jan and Alfred.  At some point we are introduced to 16-year-old Maria, who is hired to work at Alfred’s shop.  She’s a pretty thing, and not all that choosy with whose company she shares.  Sometime later, she'll have her own weird kid, and like Oskar, he will never be sure who the father is.  The suspects?  Alfred, who must be in his 50’s by then, or Oskar, who, of course, is 3.  Yes, this was quite the controversial movie.

Maria:  She's not too picky

Now for the allegory part.  I guess one could watch this and say Oskar’s age stands for something, and the nationalities of Oskar’s fathers stand for something, and of course, “the tin drum” stands for something.  By the end of the movie, really couldn’t have cared less about that.  I didn’t like Oskar, I didn’t like his fathers, I didn’t like his friends, and I certainly didn’t care for the Nazis.  (As for Maria, I thought, if I had been there, I bet I would have a shot with her.)  I didn’t really care whether Oskar would ever age again or whether he’d ever beat his serious addiction to getting another and another new tin drum.  All I knew was that other smarter people than me were somehow in the know and “got” all of the meaning in this highly acclaimed movie.  And that I didn’t.

The Title:  Die Blechtrommel, in German.  The title is the same as the 1959 Günter Grass novel upon which this film was based.  My bet is that I wouldn’t have understood the book any more than I did the film.

Representation of heartless industry, or just a Tin Man?

The Culture:  As with so many Best Foreign Film winners, we get a look at pre-war Europe, this time western Poland.  One  theme showing up these pre-war films is the terrible uncertainty people felt at the time.  The choice always seems to be:  Go with the Nazis and make the best of it, or oppose the Nazis and expect the worst.  It is, of course, easy to judge in retrospect, but it must have been a difficult thing to grapple with for so many (non-Jewish) families in Europe.

Agenda danger:  If I had understood all the symbols in this thing, I may have been wearied by the message.  I sensed an anti-nationalism coming from Oskar’s unhappiness at having been raised by two men who represented two political views and countries of origin.  But as usual, the Nazis who are the bad guys, and who can object to that?

Best Picture that year:  Kramer vs. Kramer.

Rating:  The Tin Drum won a bunch of awards and made a ton of money, so who am I to say it’s no good?  I will say that I laughed a few times, though I’m not too sure I was supposed to.  In the end, it made me ask myself this philosophical question:  Who is smarter: intellectuals who watch movies like this and understand all the meanings, or the common folk who avoid watching movies like this?