illy Pilgrim (Sacks) has become unstuck in time.
He's typing these very words in the basement of his comfortable suburban
home when suddenly, he is a young GI again, in a snowy European forest during
World War II, behind enemy lines, barely eluding a German patrol. The next
moment, he's in the future, on the planet Tralfamadore, with his
girlfriend, the actress and centerfold model Montana Wildhack (Perrine).
"Billy, you're time tripping again?" she asks him. He nods. "Time
travel's a bitch for you, isn't it? Particularly the war." "I can't help
it," he says.
That's when the Germans capture Pilgrim and his hapless companions,
including the vengeful Paul Lazzaro (Leibman), who vows a death oath
against Billy for an imagined slight. Billy is saved by Edgar Derby (Eugene
Roche), a fatherly GI who becomes his protector and who is the one unambiguously good
man in Pilgrim's universe. Naturally, Derby gets killed later. But that's
getting ahead of the story.
At the same time, Billy is a middle-aged optometrist married to the
wealthy--if a little zaftig--Valencia Merble (Sharon Gans). Billy raises
two children, gets in a plane crash with his father-in-law, and survives.
But his life is nonetheless beset by an unexpected tragedy.
In World War II, Pilgrim and the other POWs are transferred to Dresden, where
they are housed in Schachthof Fuenf, slaughter-house five. They have the
misfortune to be there on the day the Allies firebomb the jewel-like city.
At the same time, a middle-aged Billy has been transported to a dome on
the planet Tralfamadore, 423 billion miles from earth. Aliens want to
observe human behavior--including mating. Fortunately for the
Tralfamadorians, Billy's companion, Montana Wildhack, likes him. "You don't
meet many gentlemen in the entertainment industry," she explains.
"Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell."
Based on Vonnegut's best-known novel and directed by Hill (Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), 1972's Slaughterhouse-Five is the
one, perfect filmed realization of Vonnegut's work. He
himself called it a "flawless translation": "I drool and cackle every time
I watch that film," Vonnegut told writer Greg Mitchell.
From the very beginning--with the elegiac notes of Johann Sebastian
Bach's music backing a vista of blowing snow--Slaughterhouse-Five is
exhilarating, hilarious, moving, beautiful and tragic all at once.
Mirroring the technique of the novel--and literally bringing to life
Pilgrim's spastic time-jumping--the movie intercuts three separate
narratives, telling them simultaneously.
Each narrative--the WWII story, Pilgrim's postwar life and his future on
Tralfamadore--acts as an ironic counterpoint to the others in the manner of a
musical fugue. How appropriate that legendary pianist Glenn Gould, who did
the music for the film, chose a score featuring the elegant counterpoint of
Bach.
The contrapuntal movie builds powerfully, culminating in the tragic,
futile firebombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut himself witnessed. Along the
way, the audience is shown various brands of absurdity, from barbershop
quartets to American Nazi Howard Campbell and his ridiculous outfit, to the
ideologies that lead to war.
The graceful structure results in a film that folds back on itself,
showing how a man's past informs his present and future, how life can be
both tragic and beautiful, and how it is always absurd. In this,
Slaughterhouse-Five captures like no
other film Vonnegut's unique brand of fatalism and hope despite life's
senselessness.
Beyond this, the film is screamingly funny, particularly Billy's sweet
relationship with his ditzy, doomed wife. There are moments of beauty,
particularly the entrance into the baroque city of Dresden. There are
scenes of sorrow, like an adolescent German soldier's anguish when viewing
the ruins of his beloved city. And there are moments of horror, like the
burning of children's bodies after the firebombing.
