Good scenes Bad movie

Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most confusing stories I have ever read. The movie version however, was absolute chaos in my opinion. I understand that this story is about Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, and his experience with random time travel, but the order each “time jump” follows is too confusing. Overall the movie was terrible, but there were some individual scenes that were done nicely. For example, the scene where Billy’s wife, Valencia, is driving to the hospital where Billy is located was hilarious. It showed how crazy she was for Billy, which gives a great explanation why she did not stop to fix her exhaust pipe. Valencia character was fully expressed as she drove the wrong way on the highway, crashed into numerous cars, and even turned around to crash into previous cars.

            The only other thing I like about the film was the director’s use of transitions between time jumps. I enjoy how the director shows the audience the concept that Billy has no control of his time travel. Sometimes he even confuses the time period he is in. When Billy is receiving an award he constantly travels between then and the war. The “war time” Billy begins to clap at an inappropriate time because a futuristic Billy is in a completely different situation. I found it very interesting the way the director uses these brief random time jumps to, inevitably, cause his death. When Billy meets Lazzaro for the first time he starts to make kissing faces, this is because he quickly time jumps to when he is with Montanna. Lazzaro thinks Billy is provoking him, which begins his hatred for Billy. His hatred continues to grow for years until he finally kills Billy.

            Although the director tried to link certain scenes with those that occurred much before or much later, the story was too confusing to make it a good movie. With a book the author can “stop” what is happening and explain certain scenes, but the director of a film cannot do the same. He has to try and explain the movie with what is happening on screen. Since a narrated movie would not fit with this story, many scenes left me confused. Although some scenes were done fairly well, I would never suggest this movie to anyone.