Movie Review - Insanity in Billy's Surroundings

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s novel, Slaughterhouse V, is a whirlwind account of Billy Pilgrim and his random excursions through time. The movie adaptation, Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), attempts to capture the story’s wild plot with a fluidity that makes it understandable to its audience. All in all, the movie successfully untangles the often cryptic chronology of the book. However, it most successfully illustrates the absurdity of the novel’s characters. 

Initially impressive is the character Paul Lazzaro (Ron Leibman) who takes an oath to kill Billy while they are simultaneously incarcerated during World War II. Director George Roy Hill is spot-on with Lazzaro’s truculent personality. Throughout the picture, Hill casts Lazzaro as a small and angry character who is often compelled to spew violent and vicious threats. The directors choice to include myriad scenes of Lazzaro making threats to anyone who will listen - and a few who will not - contributes immensely to the characterization of a passionate miscreant. Only through his sickened stories can the audience truly grasp that, “nobody fucks around with Paul Lazzaro!”

Further enhancing the vivid events of Slaughterhouse-Five is the effluent personality of Valencia Pilgrim. For a protagonist characterized as shy and awkward, perhaps the ideal wife is found in Valencia Pilgrim. The direction of Hill creates the heavy-set, loud, and emotional characterization of Valencia as it was written in the novel. The constant pestering she provides Billy, specifically in the scene with his dog, incites the perfect feeling in the audience. Ultimately, her most prominent scene in which she drives to the hospital to see Billy, presents her insanity: she destroys miles of roadway, before succumbing to her own efforts to see her injured husband.