Slaughterhouse-Five Movie Critique

Slaughterhouse-Five the Movie and its Successful Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 Novel

            Kurt Vonnegut’s famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five features a protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, who is “unstuck in time.” As a result, the novel does not follow a traditional linear progression. For instance, Billy could be in Dresden during the firebombing then in the next paragraph be on the alien planet Tralfamadore and at the scene of his death in the next. How these two paragraphs link together is left up to the reader’s own imagination. With film though, the average viewer shuts down his or her imagination almost entirely and only takes in what is being shown to them. This provides a particular challenge for someone trying to make a film adaptation of this novel—especially if one were only dealing with 1972 film technology (the year the movie came out). However, putting aside the low quality animations (that make some modern day home videos look good) and the tackiness of some scenes (unfortunately, I think that the tackiness is just the “nature of the beast” for a early 70s science fiction movie), the director George Roy Hill does an excellent job of capturing the essence of the novel resulting in a film that captures many of the philosophical questions (including the nature of war and how it can break down a person) proposed in the print version as well as acting as a form of social commentary on a dysfunctional family through a dark and twisted form of satire.

            There are many scenes that stand out to me. Among these scenes are Valencia Merble’s death and the scenes building up to it, the scene when Billy’s son enthusiastically returns from Vietnam and talks to his disturbed father, and the transitions between the different moments in Billy’s life. However, the fire-bombing scene stands out from the others. This scene is far more serious than just about any other scene in the movie and shows that this is not simply a comedy but very serious movie that, in this particular scene, questions the morality of men in a time of war. American prisoners are terrified and seen breaking down while they wait in the bomb shelter. As they begin to hear the bombs fall the viewer can tell, through their facial expressions, that they are questioning whether this act of violence is really necessary to their cause. The flashing of the lights inside the shelter adds to the drama. This is further escalated when the scene cuts to what appears to be real footage from an allied bombing raid. In this footage, the viewer sees the destruction of this city that was earlier shown as a beautiful and historic city that seemed to have been spared from the total corruption and destruction that seemed to encompass most of Europe and all of Germany.

            Despite diverging from the novel (most notably the omission of the character Kilgore Trout), the key scenes and general feel of the novel are still retained. This film is a perfect example of how a novel can be successfully transformed into film and stands out from many other novel based films.