Slaughterhouse Five

 

Slaughterhouse Five 1972

• Director: George Roy Hill
• Seen by this director: The World According to Garp, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii
• Based on the book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
• Cast: Michael Sachs, Ron Liebman, Eugene Roach, Sharon Glans, Valerie Perrine, Holly Near
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Michael Sachs – Sugarland Express
• Eugene Roach – something, I’m sure
• Valerie Perrine – Superman 1&2, Lenny
• Holly Near – The Mod Squad, All in the Family
• Why? The book
• Seen: 18 February 2023      

       How in the world can this book be made into a film? We’ll soon see.

       The story, which follows the book faithfully, in brief: Hapless Billy Pilgrim (Sachs) jumps back in forth in time and space (TARDIS, anyone?) with no control, from his present life in the 60s with a wife and two grown children, to a galaxy far away where he lives in a bubble to entertain the Tralfamadorians, to WWII, to the psychiatric hospital, to Dresden during the bombing.

       If it follows the book faithfully, why is it so flat? The acting is mostly hammy but the real problem is the lack of a narrator (the book has one, an ‘I’ who appears only very infrequently and is no doubt Vonnegut himself) to laconically juxtapose absurdities, despair and horrors and to say ‘so it goes’ at every mention of death.

       I respect the attempt, but it is far from the masterpiece that the book is. 

3* of 5