Slaughterhouse Five the Movie - An Intrinsic Failure

Above all, the novel converges to the conventional anti-war movement that matches with the general attitude of that time period, despite its rather unique design from the beginning. On the contrary, the movie focuses more on the humorous part of Slaughterhouse-Five, emphasizing what is unique of this novel, and avoiding the cliche anti-war attitude.

The first scene that caught my attention was the march of the American captives on German streets. Michael Sacks captured Billy Pilgrim’s character and movements well, as he limped along with the line. The difference between Billy and other characters were made substantial by the film, highlighting the trauma that the war brings to people. The details of the Germans mocking Billy were exactly captured as in the novel. Through this, the film demonstrated the theme of the fiction, which is the resentment towards wars. Furthermore, the conceited “three musketeers” and their ironic death emphasized a humorous point of the novel.
Yet, one major theme of the novel - dark humor - was very limited in the film. This is probably not due to the inability of the director, but more because of the wide application of literal humor inside the novel. As most humorous points existed in the descriptive lines instead of direct quotations, it is impossible for the film to rebuild these lines without those phrases. This makes the most distinct difference between the novel and the film, since the humorousness were replaced by pale scenes. Personally, I do not think that this fiction is a legible source for a film, as the fiction is mostly constituted of ironic concluding phrases, such as “so it goes” and “poo-tee-weet”. In light of this statement, the director tended to emphasize on the time traveling by making it occur more frequently throughout the film, as it is one of the very few elements that could capture the audiences. However, on the other hand, this made the movie confusing to people who have not read the book, since the sequence of storytelling was broken up in the film. Also, the omitting of the fictional “writer” of this book - Yon Yonson - modified the overall structure of the storyline, as it became a live experience instead of a story. This alters the philosophical foundation of the book, as the film assumed time traveling not to be a fictitious concept, but a realistic experience.
As the film comes to an end, it did not seem to fall into the ending of the book. Instead, it went through Billy's life on Tralfamadore. This intriguing arrangement underlines the tone of the film: it is a piece of art mainly to appeal to the audiences. Therefore, the multiple discrepancies between the book and the film are understandable.