SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
released OUT NOW! 1972 | 15 | Blu-ray Director George roy Hill Cast Michael sacks, ron leibman, eugene roche, sharon Gans Your reaction to Slaughterhouse-Five will depend on how familiar you are with the original 1969 novel – and unusually for a literary adaptation, in this case you’re probably going to respond better to the film if you have.
Michael Sacks plays “unstuck in time” hero Billy Pilgrim, who finds his life jumbled like a deck of cards, experiences coming achronologically as he slips between being a POW during the firebombing of Dresden; a family man post-WW2; and an alien abductee on the planet Tralfamadore.
Newcomers will find Pilgrim a rather watery presence and may be frustrated by the minimal SF content – with Billy only installed in an alien zoo late in the day, this is chiefly a wryly absurdist take on the madness of war. The editing strategy also means Billy’s temporal unmooring may come across more like flashbacks.
Approached with knowledge of Kurt Vonnegut’s semi auto biographical novel, The Sting director George Roy Hill’s film makes rather better sense, and Sacks’s performance seems appropriate for his blank slate character. Vonnegut certainly thought so, saying, “I drool every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book.” You’ll probably maintain saliva control, though.
Extras None.