Film Notes: Slaughterhouse Five

Over the weekend I watched the film of Slaughterhouse 5, having recently read the book. I was really dissapointed with the film, and not just because it's 1972 vintage makes it seem rather dated (that's usually a positive thing in my book). The dissapointment came with the way that the film just didn't seem to capture the atmosphere or spirit of the book at all. Vonnegut himself was excised from it (either in the autobiographical introduction) or properly as Kilgore Trout, his alter-ego - but that wasn't the problem. The strength of the book isn't the narrative, its the message, pathos, and bleak whimsy that tells. The film reverses this (inevitably perhaps) and overblows the action, losing the force of the book. No where is this more apparant than in the death of Valencia Pilgrim. Where Vonnegut announces the death almost in passing, the point is to contrast it with her husbands near-death survival. The film errs by making the death a farcical extravaganza, only hinting towards the author's sense of the incident when corpse and survivor's bodies pass each other on hospital trolleys. Why the reverse-bombing of Dresden wasn't the central point of the film remains a mystery - it is certainly a key to the book.

I'll read the book again one day. As for the film- well, it's one for the archives I suppose.