Slaughterhouse Five Critique

Slaughterhouse Five

Billy Pilgrim, a former prisoner of war, is the main character in Slaughterhouse Five. This film is based on the book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s. The setting of the movie is in various locations, from Germany to a foreign planet called Tralfamadore. Billy Pilgrim was born in New York sometime during the 1920s, and from different clips of the movie the audience learns he had a somewhat tormented upbringing. Billy gets drafted into the war before he gets to go to college. From the point of his departure to war and on, the plot in the film evolves into a confusing memoire of Billy Pilgrim’s past, present, and surprising future, and ultimately somewhat shocking death.
After the audience becomes acquainted with Mr. Pilgrim, the movie takes place in clips from his memory. The movie jumps into Billy’s future with his somewhat insane wife and two children and then back to his childhood. Billy’s mind also takes us to the mysterious planet Tralfamadore in the fourth dimension. On the planet Tralfamadore, Billy lives in a dome which is situated on stilts in the middle of the planet. On Tralfamadore you cannot see the planet’s inhabitants, only hear them. The planet’s atmosphere is toxic, so Billy has to stay in his dome, which he lives in with his dog Spot and a famous Hollywood actress “Montana Wildhack”. The invisible inhabitants encourage Billy and Montana to “mate”, which is rather weird and disturbing. Billy’s trips to Tralfamadore begin after a tragic event takes place in his real present life. The setting and sequence of events on Tralfamadore are odd, and do not seem to tie in with the rest of the film.
The other settings throughout Slaughterhouse Five are rather disturbing. For fans of the recent movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this would be a good movie to watch, because the plot is rather similar, especially with the time jumping. From the title I had guessed this movie was a horror Saw type of movie, but it unfortunately for me was not. The title Slaughterhouse Five comes from where Billy and his fellow soldiers are put in during the war. They are told if they ever are in an emergency or in harm’s way to say “Slaughterhouse five” and they’ll be taken back there and will not be hurt for being Americans.
As for the casting for Slaughterhouse Five, I’d give them about three stars as acting goes. Although it was also filmed in the 70s, and I’m not too familiar with famous actors and actresses from that time period, but compared to today’s actors they were just okay. The movie captured Billy’s young adulthood to his older years, but the actor Michael Sacks appears to look like 20-something year old Billy the whole film.
The music throughout the movie was pretty corny and sci-fi-like. Also, the special effects were definitely not how they are today, but for the 70s they were pretty good. To fully follow the plot and piece together Billy Pilgrim’s life, you really cannot miss a minute of this movie. In my opinion, Billy seems to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and he jumps through time and his memories because he cannot seem to grasp his experience in the war and some of the events that follow once he comes home. Unfortunately, this is common among soldiers from the past and also in the present, and this film does capture that unsettling truth quite well.
A good theme is projected throughout the movie, and it also gives the viewer a good sense of how some soldiers and most prisoners of war come home. For those who do not care to think during a movie, I would recommend you not see this. I for one am one of those people. Putting so much thought into a movie makes me rather hostile. Overall, I’d give Slaughterhouse Five two and a half stars.