Slaughterhouse-Five

Plot synopsis:
It is about March of 1968. A young lady in her early twenties and her husband pull up in their 1969 Ford Country Squire Station wagon to a lavish upstate New York home on a lake, near the town of Ilium, believed to be the fictional title for the actual city of Schenectady. She frantically knocks on the front door calling for her father and no response. She peers through all the windows of the lavish home and sees nothing. Then she lets herself in the back of the home in the utility room desperately searching for her father.In the basement of his home, Billy Pilgrim, a balding, bespectacled, mild-mannered, and passive man of 45 years of age is typing a letter to his local daily newspaper of his time travels and how he is uncontrollably traveling from one point of his life to the other, being "unstuck in time". While he is typing his letter, he finds himself at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in January 1945, at the age of 22 alone and running through the snow. He is not dressed as a soldier at all, no weapon, and wearing a stocking cap, overcoat, sweater, and pants that are nothing suggesting Army attire. He is kidnapped by two brash, uncouth, mean, and very stupid men of his age, fellow soldiers named Paul Lazzaro and Roland Weary. They immediately think he's a German, but he denies it and they soon forget about it, since there's an attack going on. The men's Corporal abandons them and Lazzaro swears revenge.Briefly, Billy finds himself back on planet Tralfamadore in the geodesic dome with beautiful, 20-something porn star queen, Montana Wildhack and she suspects he's time traveling again and wants to give him a kiss to help forget about it. Simultaneously, Billy is back at the Battle of the Bulge and Paul Lazzaro hears him say "a little kiss" and Lazzaro is outraged beyond rationalization and accuses Billy of being homosexual, violently attacking him. Shortly after, two German guards take them at gunpoint tell them to get up and for Weary to give up his bootsIt is the summer of 1946, at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Billy and his annoying and overweight new bride, Valencia Merble Pilgrim, are on their honeymoon. She thinks he had girlfriends during the war, but was glad they waited to have sex and that he married her. Billy seems bored by her doting and chit-chatting .Back to January 1945, Billy, Weary, and Lazzaro are marching with many other soldiers throughout war-torn remains of an unidentified town in Belgium, France, or Germany. Billy is flirted with by two young prostitutes while marching and bumps into Weary, stepping on his gangrene-riddled feet from wearing no combat boots. Lazzaro is furious and beats up Billy for it. Two German officers spot Billy for his clumsiness and bring him over to pose for a photo. Simultaneously, the portrait flashes forward to 1955-1958 with Billy and his family dedicating a new Ilium Optometry Center. Afterwards, an ill, senile, and shell-shocked Colonel named Wild Bob is escorting the men onto the train bound for a POW camp and fails to realize his men are not there. Billy enters the boxcar and goes to sleep. After pulling the covers on his head, it is the Spring of 1946 and he is in a veterans hospital being treated, allegedly for shell-shock or a nervous breakdown. His southern-accented and sweet-natured mother is talking to fellow patient, Elliot Rosewater of Billy's experiences. Soon afterwards, Billy is back in the boxcar with fellow soldier Weary blaming him for his death from gangrene. Paul Lazzaro cradles him in his arms and he dies. Billy finds himself back in the veterans hospital being given shock treatment.The steam locomotive train pulls up to a POW camp somewhere in Germany. Billy is given a blue, fur-collared overcoat way too small for him by German soldiers as a joke. The men are processed by a German officer and led into a shower room to be deloused. Afterwards, Billy finds himself as a little boy of about 6 or 7 in the shower at the YMCA and his father takes him out of the shower and throws him into the pool to "sink or swim".Billy and other soldiers are being marched to the mess hall and given a jovial welcome by English officers singing "The Yanks are Here". They are led into a dining room decorated with candles and with a potluck of potato soup, hot bread, pies, and marmalade. The English officer escorting Billy tells him the coat was a joke and to wear it with pride and how to hold his head high, despite the deplorable circumstances. Billy passes out at the suggestion.With the tune of the Andrews Sisters singing Johnny Fedora, Billy is at his new home in Ilium in spring and summer of 1947 playing with his new puppy, Spot, with his wife calling him for dinner twice. There is a party going on at his house a later night celebrating his new baby daughter, Barbara. He's obviously feeling out of place at the party with disinterested attendees and his wife chewing him out for the dog peeing on her leg. He takes the dog outside, sits at the lake, and sees a strange occurrence in the night sky, a beam of light coming to him, then leaving.It's back to the POW camp. Paul Lazzaro threatens Billy for Weary's death, but fellow soldier Edgar Derby intervenes. Derby is a middle-aged man of 44 years of age that gave up his job as a trade school teacher in Boston to fight in the war. He is a father figure to Billy and the two immediately form a close bond and friendship. Derby goes through Billy's coat and finds a partial denture and diamond of at least 2 carats.It is Billy and Valencia's anniversary at their home in the summer of 1964. He gives his wife a ring made by the diamond found in his coat. Billy is bored by the crowd and retreats inside his home. He catches his son in the bathroom looking at a porn magazine and scolds him for it. But afterwards, Billy looks at the magazine himself, smiling with delighted interest at the centerfold of Montana Wildhack and goes to the bedroom with it.Billy finds himself back at the POW camp in the briefing room with the rest of the soldiers to be told about the men's new assignment in Dresden and how lucky they are. Edgar Derby is nominated as their leader. Simultaneously, when Derby gives an acceptance speech, Billy is at a Lions Club meeting at his hometown in 1957 giving an acceptance speech.It's about 1964 or 1965 and Billy and his family are watching a soft-core porn flick with Montana Wildhack in it. Billy's son enjoys it and his wife is outraged at the filth. Billy pays no attention to her and is engrossed in it.Billy and fellow soldiers are in a boxcar on their way to Dresden and Derby is going over with him a letter he wrote to his wife about his service and about his pride in his son also serving in the South Pacific.About 1965 or 1966, Billy and his wife pull up to a cemetery with a police officer that caught his now-delinquent son and others vandalizing the tombstones and offers to pay off the officers for the damages.The soldiers pull up to the train station at Dresden, being led by an elderly German officer and several teenage proteges under his wing. They are marched to their new quarters through the beautiful city. A group of kids surround Billy while they are marching and an outraged elderly German civilian slaps him in the face, believing he is insulting his people with the coat he is wearing.It is February of 1968. Billy and fellow optometrists, to include his father in law, are about to take a chartered flight to Montreal for a convention. Billy sees visions of skiers in the crowd when waving goodbye and tells the pilots they need to stop the plane, because it will crash. They refuse to acknowledge, but the plane does crashBack to Dresden, the elderly German officer tells them of their quarters, Slaughterhouse Five, where they will be staying and what to shout in German in case of emergency.Billy is buried in the snow in the Green Mountains and a group of skiers find him bloodied and buried in the rubble.Billy's wife frantically pulls her 1967 Cadillac out of the driveway after hearing the news and comes to his rescue. She is so distressed that she misses her turn, backs into a Mercedes, drives the wrong side of the road, and causes numerous damage in vehicle accidents. She escapes the police, gets on the right side of the road, and goes forward, despite the fact the exhaust is ruined and spewing carbon monoxide. There is a brief flashback of Billy giving his wife the car for her birthday maybe a year or two earlier. Then the car pulls up to a hospital in Vermont and she crashes it into the garage, passed out from the carbon monoxide. Two nurses rescue her and bring her inside, with the gurney she's on passing the one Billy is on.Billy is being operated on and simultaneously, he and the fellow soldiers are in their slaughterhouse quarters being briefed about their working assignments by the German officer and daily routine of work. After the operation is over, the doctor that operated on Billy greets his daughter Barbara that everything will be okay. Barbara's husband Stanley comes over to her to give her the news that her mother died from carbon monoxide poisoning earlier.Billy is in his room recovering with an arrogant professor and historian for a roommate named B.C. Rumfoord telling his much-younger wife about being stuck in a room with such a weak and worthless man. He's writing a story on the bombing of Dresden and Billy says in a daze he was there, but Rumfoord couldn't care less. Simultaneously, Billy is blathering in German that he's an American Prisoner of War and Slaughterhouse Five. Rumfoord loses his temper and tells Billy the bombing was justified, while simultaneously, Billy as a young soldier is walking amidst a crowd of cheerful kids just hours before the bombing.The night of the bombing at dinner, an American dressed up in a Nazi uniform with American flag decor named Howard Campbell, is summoned to recruit the men for the Free American Corps, which is an allied unit with the Germans and that the Communists and Jews are their enemy. Derby calls him out on it for what a filthy traitor he really is, but before he can say anything more, an alarm goes off for the city and the men are ordered to evacuate to an underground cellar for shelter. Dresden gets bombed.In March 1968, Billy is taken home by his daughter Barbara and she pleads with him to stay with she and her husband, but he refuses. He is senile, listless, and apathetic at this point. He takes his elderly dog Spot and shuts the door in her face.The bombing is over and the soldiers go up the stairs to inspect the damage. Simultaneously, Billy is walking upstairs in his posh estate to his bedroom with his dog in his arms. The men walk outside. A teenage German soldier guarding their group denounces the bombers as filthy pigs in German and runs to rescue his family, who were already killed and he burns to death searching for them.Billy is laying in bed at his home with Spot and his son Robert has come to visit him. The former delinquent is now a sharp Green Beret in the Army fighting in Vietnam home on emergency leave. Robert is caring of him and trying to have a conversation, but Billy is preoccupied with himself, looking out the window at the night sky, and uninterested at his visiting, but assures him he's proud of him. Right after Robert leaves, the beam of light he saw in the sky while at the lake at his house in 1947 reappears and takes him away. He and his dog Spot are whisked away to a geodesic dome on the planet Tralfamadore. He's confounded as to his appearance there. The Tralfamadorian elder tells him he can't see them because they live in the Fourth Dimension and that he can't leave the dome. No reason why he is there, he just is.Billy and the American soldiers are ordered by the elderly German officer to process the corpses from the rubble of the bombed Dresden city and to collect their personal remains. They are given a direct order that any looting or stealing will result in firing squad. While Billy and the soldiers are collecting the bodies, he's on Tralfamadore telling the elder about the bombing and how it affected him, but he's comforted and assured that everything that happens always has and always will happen and that the past, present, and future are always happening at the same time in their world, which also gets destroyed and destroys the entire universe because of a mishap with one of their test pilots.Porn actress Montana Wildhack has now been added to the exhibit with Billy in the dome and she's scared to death at first not knowing what's happening. The Tralfamadorian elder insists that they mate, but Billy insists on being a Gentleman with her and does not follow the order. But she lets him go to bed with her and they make love.Some days later after the bombing, Derby finds an undamaged figurine in the rubble that is an exact replica of one his son broke before. He's caught by German officers and shot to death by firing squad. Billy tries to stop it to no avail.Billy is back on Tralfamadore with Montana in her new wardrobe. He tells her of his wife, that the thing he liked best about her was her pancakes. They want to have a baby together.It is back to March 1968 when Billy's daughter was frantically searching for him in his house. He, his daughter, and son in law are at the dining room table and she really thinks he's lost his mind about Tralfamadore and his son in law suggests seeing a psychiatrist. He assures them that the Tralfamadorians do not see past, present, and future the way Earthlings do. And also reveals to them the disappeared porn star Montana Wildhack is the love interest there and that he's seen his death.It is an unspecified time, perhaps the early 2000's. An elderly Billy Pilgrim in his 80's addresses a crowd at a high rise in Philadelphia about Tralfamadore and their lack of concept about time. And that a fellow soldier from World War 2 is about to kill him. Paul Lazzaro is now also a very elderly man that lives in the area shooting him sniper-style and instantly killing him.Billy wakes up to find himself amongst the remains to Dresden in April 1945 with Lazzaro and fellow soldiers attempting to steal a grandfather clock. He's assured all the Germans have left, but when in the process of stealing, Lazzaro and the others leave, with the clock toppling on Billy. It turns out the German side of the war is over and Russian soldiers give Billy a drink to celebrate, which he gagsBilly and Montana have a baby on Tralfamadore, with the entire planet celebrating with an array of fireworks

Tags: boring, murder, flashback, insanity, absurd, psychedelic, revenge, storytelling

Review:
Like most of those who have posted before me, I am an avid Vonnegut fan and went into this movie with a guarded optimism that it would just be decent.But George Roy Hill did an excellent job conveying the overall feel of the book -- the time jumping was flawless and I didn't find it hard to follow at all.
Kurt Vonnegut was more than worthy of the National Book Award that he received for the novel Slaughterhouse Five, but his humor and literary expertise are often lost in screenplays.This flawed movie was a cult classic since its release because legions of Vonnegut fans were so fond of the novel that they could overlook the film's flaws.
There always seems to be an element of tragic waste in his characters' lives, and never is the feeling more evident than in the book and film of "Slaugherhouse-Five."  It's not surprising to learn that Vonnegut really did live through the firebombing of Dresden during World War II.If there's a weak element of the film, it's the bombing itself.
The novel, by itself, is one of the best I've ever read -- it gleefully trashes the rules of standard novel-making, narration, and continuity, and manages to tell a real whale of a tale (there's a lot of weird stuff to swallow in it.)  When I saw Hill credited as director, I moaned in agony, recalling the headaches that were induced by his smug, syrupy box office smashes "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting."  After those two, I gave up all hope in Hill, the same way I did with Richard Lester after "Petulia" and "Help!"  By the end of the movie, however, I ate my words.
Not quite the task Cronenberg took on when he directed Burrough's Naked Lunch, but very similar in method.S-5 exposes us to the life of Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) and his many loves (his dog spot, his wife played by Holly Near and an actress played by Valerie Perrine), as he either blacks out and travels into the deep recesses of his memory experiencing the delusion of time travel or (as indicated by his occasional leaps forward in time), he actually has become 'unstuck in time.' Between trips back to Dresden during its WWII bombing and trips forward to the planet Tralfamador, it seems that Billy is constantly tripping.
Fantastic directoral method!The film makes a lot of subtle, simple and very good points by making Billy - a quiet simple guy with an extraordinary set of circumstances in his life - a true hero simply because he is relatively nice, somewhat aloof, happy, and quite normal.
Parts of it drag a little, but there's enough interesting scenes to pull the film together and maintain interest, especially for fans of sci-fi, war movies, or bizarre cinema in general.I have no idea how close of an adaptation this movie is to the book, but on its own merits, the film does an interesting job of using its random narrative structure to show the character at the different phases of his life; really, it shows somewhere between three to five different narrative strings at once.
Michael Sacks is very believable as the title character, Billy Pilgrim, a character who endures WW2, the Battle of the Bulge, the bombing of Dresden, and finally, his life in suburban America.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is, of course, a brilliant writer, but if you read his book first, the movie may clarify a few things.
Twenty years ago, I remember watching this movie for the first time on the Saturday late show in the days before today's ubiquitous cable channels and remembered how memorable and wonderful that Vonnegut read had been in college.The first thing that took me by storm was the music of the greatest master of music: Johann Sebastian Bach, soulfully played by another master, Glenn Gould, that introspective, quirky, and genial Canadian pianist who played the slow movement of Bach's Fifth Keyboard Concerto during Billy Pilgrim's ascent to Tralfamadore...The eternal flavor of that piece evoked a sense of time which had no boundaries.I sat mesmerized and entranced at the movie's drawing power into my consciousness and the deepest places of my psyche.Here I had found a film that spoke to my innermost fears and desires.
The parts set in WWII are realistic, and are directly based on Kurt Vonnegut's wartime experiences as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany's Dresden, safe deep below ground while the city was firebombed at the end of the war; resulting in more damage and casualties than Hiroshima, and arguably with a lot less purpose.Being "unstuck in time" is a great description for the way our brains really work most of the time -- at any one moment reflecting on a particular childhood afternoon during 6th grade, or reliving an argument or love scene from the night before, or fantasizing an imagined future.
For Vonnegut, the horrors of Dresden were impossible to write about in a completely direct way, which makes the movie's structure not only fun, but also deeply "right." As to the acting, Michael Sacks is great as Billy Pilgrim, and Eugene Roche great as Edgar Derby; but Valerie Perrine despite having less screen time as Montana Wildhack practically steals the show.
A viewer who has never read the book will be hopelessly lost almost from the beginning, as the story line is told from the point of view of a man who has come "unstuck in time."  This conceit (where the hero has no control over the order in which he experiences his life), while used to stunning effect in the book, can make for a very muddled FILM, and here sadly, the final product can't be excused for its fidelity to the spirit of the novel.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" begins with a man, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), typing on a sheet of paper that he has become "unstuck in time." He's caught in a time warp causing him to shift back and forth without warning to different points in his life.
But the film has relatively few such moments, and we can't help thinking that what we're seeing is simply the perspective of an older man experiencing flashbacks, a distinct possibility considering that we later learn that the older Pilgrim had a nervous breakdown.I tend to enjoy movies with fractured story-lines of this sort, because the task is not merely to see events unfold, but to piece together what has already happened.
The story at its core is a philosophical argument, but Vonnegut prevents it from becoming dry and academic, which I cannot quite say about the film.In the book, the time-tripping never feels like a mere narrative device; it feels like it's really happening.
In the movie, we get none of the sense of Pilgrim struggling to adapt to the situation, of being forced to grow as a result.I found, when reading the book, that the disparate sections of the story connected a lot better.
Kurt Vonnegut's novel detailing the strange odyssey of Billy Pilgrim was probably unfilmmable, though--to his credit--director George Roy Hill gives it a noble try.
Stephen Geller adapted the popular book about a man living his life out of sequence, going back and forth in time before finally settling down on a distant planet with a movie-actress as his companion.
Honestly, I'm not that sure that someone who hasn't read the novel could follow the movie that well, but, as a fan of the source material, I think the film's a good companion piece to it.
Michael Sacks is great as Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time, drifting between his youth as an assistant chaplain captured by Germans in WWII, to the safe and modest life of a suburban businessman, to his abduction by aliens and his life in an alien zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.
Of course, the movie can in no way substitute the book, which is an essential read anyway, but it's helping you visualize Vonnegut's story.
This is one such gem called "Slaughter-House Five." It's the story of Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) who's character is plucked from one life period and transferred to other times and dimensions.
The novel upon which this film is based is my all time favorite book, and the biggest flaw of its movie adaptation is that it doesn't really live up to the greatness of the novel.
Of course, I do not believe that any movie adaptation good do Vonnegut's style much justice, and this film definitely makes an attempt and, for the most part, succeeds admirably.
Billy Pilgrim, a nothing-out-of-the-ordinary World War II veteran played by Michael Sacks, recounts his, and subsequently Vonnegut's, experiences from the war, particularly the horrific fire bombing of the German city of Dresden.
Both the film and book travel through different times of Billy's life, due to his obsession with the Tralfamadorian concept of time, and also his attempt to cope with traumatic experiences by revisiting past events.
This person attempts to browbeat the reader into accepting the notion that only those willing to invest the time to both read Vonnegut's novel AND see the movie are capable of living anything other than a feckless, dull life.
To say that he has lead a very interesting life is an understatement, to say that his life makes for an interesting movie is a little more arguable.As Billy taps away at the keys the film drifts in and out of various times in Billy's life, ranging from his childhood all the way up until he is abducted by aliens and forced to live on another planet wiling away the time banging a Hollywood star.You read that right - this is not just a WW2 film.The bulk of the time though focuses on Billy's wartime experience - Slaughterhouse-5 refers to the former abattoir that Billy and fellow POWs are imprisoned in located in supposedly peaceful Dresden - and the years following his return home where he marries and raises a family.
Now granted, on the surface, many of the events occurred just like they did in the book, however I felt that the film completely missed out on the underlying messages that Vonnegut was trying to convey, this is what makes Vonnegut's reading so great, and the movie missed the mark.
I love the scene in which Billy is marched through the streets of Dresden, an exhausted prisoner, but instead of being downtrodden and depressed he chooses to see the beauty of the city and in the innocent faces of children with a smile.IF you come to this movie with an open mind you will see an intelligent, funny, tragic, and ultimately wise meditation on the absurdities of life, the human condition, the nature of time, and a simple but true way to happiness.
later, i did read the Vonegut novel, and loved it just as much as the film...Without giving anything away, I'll just say that if you like an imaginative time travel romp, quality science-fiction with a sense of humor, are a World War 2 buff, or an unusual love story, then this film may touch your heart and funny bone - this was the case for me.
But how could they make a film of that self-revelatory blend of eyewitness account and wildly imaginative fiction - war, social commentary and sci-fi?Well they did, and it turned out pretty good.George Roy Hill, who made "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and "The Sting", knew how to tell a good story, and the screenplay was by Steven Geller who wrote the novel on which "Pretty Poison" was based.The whole premise of the story is that the hero, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is unhinged in time and drops in and out of different periods of his life without notice.
The summary is great fiction and great imagination.I believe that must seen (by most people who likes science fiction movies.)I haven't read the novel(by Kurt Vonnegut)yet but I think about that.
He keeps flashing around to WWII experiences, his married life and his ultimate future.I never read Kurt Vonnegut Jr's book but I was warned that I wouldn't be able to understand this movie without it.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" (1972 - 104 minutes) is a classic drama of science fiction, directed by George Roy Hill from the script of Stephen Geller that was based on the masterpiece of the North American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The film shows the attempt of an American former-soldier (that fought in the Second World War and that witnessed the bombing of the city of Dresden) to write his experience of the war.
Billy Pilgrim (the actor Michael Sacks), the protagonist, is a citizen who travels in time, goes to the Tralfamadore planet where he makes contact with aliens and revisits diverse moments of his own life, in the past, in the present and in the future.
Where Rogers sees the non-linear timing of the film as a product of the directors attempt to spice it up, he fails to account for Vonnegut's actual working of Slaughterhouse Five in this way.
The simplicity of Vonnegut is that through works such as this he is able to make larger statements about the world around him and his memories of the Second World War. It is appalling to me to even suggest "stripping" the film of such scenes, thereby negating the whole intention of the movie and book.
The rather faithful adaptation is enough to satisfy fans of the novel, but not even the great George Roy Hill can manage to turn Stephen Geller's uninspired script into a more meaningful movie experience.To its credit, the film does find a handful of moments to illustrate how its main character, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), is unstuck in time.
Vonnegut Jr's book is all about its fragmented and displaced structure, making the film's transitions key to visually re-creating "Slaughterhouse-Five." A number of these transitions work nicely, but mostly they feel like shifts between Billy during the war, Billy and his family life and Billy on the planet Tralfamador.
Rarely does a film beg for a film-making technique like "Slaughterhouse-Five," but it's painfully obvious that it needs voice-over narration, or some kind of guiding force to help us through this structurally disjointed journey.Hill and Geller create some nice moments that weren't notable or even included in the book, but it's all throwaway without something to tie it together, something to complicate Vonnegut Jr's themes and allude to the epiphany about time at the climax.
With spectacular WW2 scenes and deliriously silly biodome home life in outer space (on Tralfamadore, of all places!) and a cast that includes the charming Michael Sacks (who looks like he could also have been MacCaulay Kulkin's uncle), a foulmouthed Ron Silver, and the divine busty Valerie Perrine, and directed with awesome versatility by STING and BUTCH CASSIDY (and THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE...!) maestro George Roy Hill, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE was avoided by the public because of the horror movie title but embraced with glee by those of us who knew and loved the equally colossal and challenging CATCH 22...which is the double feature it ultimately ended up on.
Incidentally, Vonnegut himself was quoted as saying that he was very happy with how the finished film turned out  as for myself, while I generally liked it, I couldn't help recalling what critic David Thomson had written about SOLARIS (curiously enough, another sci-fi epic released the same year): "a long way to go for a story about a failed marriage"; in the case of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, what it ultimately boils down to is this: to savor the special memories in life, one has to be able to discern the good experiences from the bad!
It's, in the simplest of terms, a film about a man, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) who is "unstuck in time." Meaning, he's living various moments of his life over and over again, but fairly randomly.
Adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five" tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a middle-aged man who is "time-tripping", bouncing back and forth from various periods.
Central to its greatness is the casting of Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's alter-ego who travels through time to the destruction of Dresden during WWII and into the future where he has a completely different wife and home-life.
Director George Roy Hill has pleasantly done so in his film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's reading, "Slaughterhouse-Five".
George Roy Hill's screening of the novel "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut is a classic, old fashioned-style film that hilariously captures Billy Pilgrim's experiences during and after the war.
No Matter How many Times I Watch This Movie I Am Always Amazed At How Like Kurt Vonnegut's Book It Is ...
It doesn't take itself so serious, but the movie is so full of symbolism, imagery, and allegory that not only does the main character Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) feel tripping, but the audience watching this film as well.
The entire prologue in which Vonnegut decides to name his story 'The Children's Crusade' is omitted from the film to focus more on the film first-person narrative from the point of view of Billy Pilgrim, who becomes "unstuck in time" and experiences the events of his life in a seemingly random order, such as the alien planet of Tralfamadore, Dresden during World War II, and life in Ilium, New York.
The book sequence in the novel where Pilgrim watches a movie about a bombing mission in World War II forward and then backward is also omitted from the film due to time constraints of the film would be nice to see why he thinks he time-trips.
Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is "unstuck in time" as the film goes back and forth in his life.
Like the ending of the book is "poo-tee-tweet" as Vonnegut explained at the beginning of the novel and the movie ends with Montana Wildhack and Billy having their child on the planet of Tralfamadore.