I got hooked by Kurt Vonnegut early on. I must say that I thought to myself many times, you just can't turn these book into movies, from "Sirens of Titan" to "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater." I guess "Slaughterhouse Five" is Vonnegut's magnum opus. It is a wonderful book, but it banks on time travel and a kind of cerebral narration. The movie tosses these things around for us and we get to see visually what is going on with Billy Pilgrim, but it is disjointed and disappointing. There are striking moments, especially having to do with World War II prisoners and the cruelty of the Germans. However, Vonnegut was most taken with the Dresden fire bombing, where people suffocated as the fires sucked the oxygen from the air. The city was destroyed. I had the good fortune to visit Dresden this summer. It has been completely rebuilt to look like it did before the war. Remarkable representation of the human spirit. War is, indeed, hell. How I felt for those people who were really not responsible for that war but paid a huge price.
Review of Slaughterhouse-Five
