Review of Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) by Robben M — 11 Jan 2009

As of this moment, as I write this, I have not read Vonnegut's tale of war, mortality, death, fate, and destiny. I am talking about Slaughterhouse five, obviously. you knew this already though. As did I. I am to read it in the future. I know this. But the point is, what will I do about that? Will I truly read the book or am I accepting the fact that I will read it in the future and that I really am not reading it myself, but rather, this is all really random and meaningless in the grand cosmic scheme of things, which is to say that I am stuck in a giant string of events, all interconnected but at the same time, not connected, adding to the point that I am generally not true to myself but instead to a string of time, totally objective and unique to me, without all the wishful thinking of a world within and without.

You know what I have no idea what the hell i'm talking about.

I'm going to Tralfamadore.

Slaugheterhouse five is an adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name. It is semi biographical, part comedy, part anti-war, part science fiction, part horror story, part surrealist fiction, part meta-meditation and part....part and parcel. THat's all I have to say about that.

Billy Pilgrim has become UNSTUCK IN TIME. That is, he has no control over his waking life and thus experiences every point in his life at random moments sprinkled throughout his entire existence. He is a prisoner of the Germans in WW II, he is married and numb in upper middle class suburbia, he is dead, he is in a plane, he is talking with several people, he is drowning, he is in Dresden, he is in a camp, he is in the snow, and he is on Tralfamadore.

Through all of this, we are left to essentially solve the mystery that is Pilgrim's life in being unstuck, that is, he is going mad? or is he actually unstuck? Or is he on Tralfamadore? Or he's dead? Or he's dreaming? Or he's stuck in a string of time?

It's a truly compelling map of life. It's hard to tell which is Vonnegut talking and which is George Roy Hill injecting himself into it. I'm not sure and this is probably my own fault for not reading the novel in the first place but it doesn't matter.

The film creates a really compelling message about war, life, and the meaning of life in a most specifically vague manner. Beautiful and cryptic is about all I can do to describe what I felt.

The film on a whole is mostly grim, with rather dry and bleak observations of humankind's behaviour, both in the war and in the waking life of modern american's. This is obviously a jab at the Vietnam war at the time of the film's production but the theme is obviously strong with no place in time. How odd that the film has essentially become unstuck in its place in history, gaining a immortality on the far planet of Tralfamdore, where the Tralfamdorians are wanting to see some people mate and have babies and then see every point in the universe from beginning to end.

It's cosmic.

How does one become unstuck in time? There are only two ways, one of which is to go to Tralfamadore. The other....

That answer is in Slaughterhouse Five.