Review of Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) by Jezebella C — 04 Apr 2015

Slaughterhouse-five, a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed the Sundance Kid in 1969) is based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut. In my opinion, I think the film follows the novel well by how it is a first person narrative from the main character, Billy Pilgrim who is played by Michael Sacks. It shows how he time travels from past, present and future. While watching the film, we experience Billy getting unstuck in time and going through events in his life in a weird order. Some main events that Billy Pilgrim goes through are in his past is when he is in World War II as a soldier and experience time in a prison with Edgar Derby and Pail Lazzaro. In the present time, he is a middle age man married to his wife Valencia Merble Pilgrim and also a father to Barbara and Robert. In the future, he gets abducted by aliens and gets trapped in a planet called Tralfamadore with the Hollywood star Montana Wildhack.

Contrasting the film to the novel, I have to dislike that the film did not show any signs of Kurt Vonnegut present as the novel did. But George Roy Hill created visual scenes by using sound and color that the novel could not do. In addition, by reading the novel first, then watching the movie I realize that George Roy Hill cut out the first and last chapters of the novel out of the film. In the beginning it jumped to when Billy's daughter is banging on the front of his door. In the film there were no scenes of Kurt Vonnegut, which I really disliked.

I feel like for first time viewers of the movie that did not read the book, it might have been hard to follow. To understand the film, in my opinion, you have to follow very closely to every detail. Also, I feel like the director did a moderate job of developing the character throughout him time traveling. The acting was not bad, but I would not say that it was great either. But in all, George Roy Hill did a wonderful job with the film compared to the novel and kept the viewers interested in the story and the characters as well.