Life Goes On...And So Forth
Movie reproductions rarely satisfy the reader’s of their original texts. However, there usually happens to be some instance in which the viewer thought the movie represented the book well. The movie Slaughterhouse Five, in my opinion, represented the book well. Going into the movie, I felt unsure as to how the producer could make Billy time travel without it being too far-fetched, yet it compiled nicely. The scene that particularly stood out in the movie and produced a somewhat philosophical effect while watching, happened to be the moment Billy teleported to the planet Tralfamadore; reading the same scene in the book did not have as quite a powerful effect as watching the scene in the movie, but it indeed summed up the novel.
In the movie production, Billy is on the planet Tralfamadore, and he flashes back to the image of the bodies burning in Dresden. He tells the Tralfamadorians, “It looked like the end of the world...Dresden after the bombing.” The fourth-dimension, all-knowing creatures respond by saying, “Don’t be so egocentric Mr. Pilgrim, we know how the world ends and it has nothing to do with Earth.” This puts the novel and what it stands for into perspective. The things that may seem like a big deal to us, are not a big deal within the entirety of our lives. Repeatedly throughout the novel, Vonnegut says “So it goes” after every instance of death; it lessens the severity of the occurrence and provides an emotional disconnect with what is being read. He says it after dramatic, sorrowful events and after negligible happenings such as “The champagne was dead,” because death creeps up on everyone and everything (Vonnegut 394). The movie scene made me think of these moments in the book, because life goes on, no matter how significant the circumstance, and we Earthlings seem to think the world revolves around us.
The specific scene where Billy interacts with the Tralfamadorians summarized the novel and the movie altogether. The two mediums of entertainment correlated closely with one another and were extremely similar in story line, unlike some books that are produced into movies. The main idea that one arrives at after reading the novel Slaughterhouse Five is “So it goes” and the scene in the movie quiets Billy when he begins to talk about his problems, with a “So it goes” effect. Life happens and people are meant to deal with what is thrown at them.
The title is a nice touch. i like how you brought across the point so it goes, and addressed that it wasn't said but bought across in the feel of the film. There could have been more focus on the film itself, but other then that good review.
ReplyDeleteBrianna, I liked how you chose a scene that you really thought encompassed the whole novel and movie. It was better than reading each scene that you thought was done well. I also liked the "so it goes" at the end, a phrase that is used so often in the book. I would definitely read your comment before seeing the movie.
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