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THE MOVIE
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. He is experiencing his life in flashbacks (or flash forwards, we don't know where in time he is now) from his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden (just before the notorius allied firebombing of that city), through his middle aged life in the unlikely named Ilium and on to his eventual abduction by aliens to the planet Tralfamadore, where he is encased in a geodesic dome and encouraged to mate with a fellow female captive.
Exploring themes of irony, time and free will, Slaughterhouse-Five is a more succesful adaptation of one of the classic Vietnam Era war novels.
Although the plot emphasises the idea that the protagonist is "unstuck in time" by establishing a nonlinear plotline, they do cheat a little. The three main time periods (war, middle age and abduction) are essentially linear, with a scene or two out of sequence to shake things up. To a mid seventies western audience, used to having everything laid out to them and explained as they go, this is probably quite challenging. To a latter day audience, used to such fair as Memento and Irreversible leaping all over the place with plot lines and the works of M Night Shyamalan turning entire stories on their head in the last five minutes, this is fairly digestible stuff.
Nor are we unused to the horrors of war. In an era when the screen has seen Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan, the bombed city of Dresden holds little sway. In fact the most confronting scenes are of latter day Americans belittling the slaughter in Dresden as justified and therefore not worthy of regret. It becomes even harder to assimilate when we know that Vonnegut relied on figures published by David Irving, now famed holocaust denier, to gauge the size of the slaughter in Dresden.
So, is it a good movie? Undoubtedbly. The characters are engaging, the story is involved and the ending defies the Hollywood norm.
Is it a "good" war movie? It probably has less relevence than some of the titles mentioned earlier. It certainly doesn't glorify war (Vonnegut subtitled the book "The Childrens Crusade" just to make that point) the way John Wayne and his ilk may have done, but is probably best viewed as a classic adaptation of a great novel rather than an example of the pinnacle of it's genre.
THE TRANSFER
Video:
If you ever want to determine the transfer quality of an older film, pick one with broad expanses of snow in it.
The age of the print used as the master showed it's venerability in the clean white hills of Belgium. Not only dirty and scratched, but simply the age of the emulsion were apparent as the colours faded in and out of hue as the frames went throught the telecine projector.
That said, this is a remarkably clean copy of the film and, other than a distressing tendency to shoot the ladies in soft focus all the time, is nice and sharp and considerably better than one would expect for a lower volume distribution title.
Audio:
Let me say that the audio track on this title is completely representative of the original sound in the theatre.
However, the sound has been misrepresented on the back of the box. Slaughterhouse-Five was released in theatre with a mono soundtrack. It was recorded in four track stereo originally, but downmixed to mono for cinemas.
The original mono soundtack has been used on the disc. This mono soundtrack has been encoded as a Dolby Stereo track, the label on the back of the box says it is a Dolby Stereo soundtrack. What comes out of your speakers is mono.
If you have a 5.1 or 6.1 surround system, then the sound will come out of the centre speaker. If you have a stereo sound system then both speakers will sound exactly the same, so the sound will appear to be coming from a centre speaker (i.e. mono).
It's a perfectly clear, albeit dynamically limited soundtrack, but it is mono, don't be misled by the back of the box!
Oh, and while I'm in a nitpicky mood, the credits list the music as being by Glen Gould. This is correct in as much as most of the music in the film is taken off his recordings of various pieces by Bach. Johann Sebastian doesn't seem to get a credit at all...
THE EXTRAS
There are a few extras. The original theatrical trailer and trailers for four other Umbrella Entertainment releases. In all cases they are 4:3 pan and scan transfers, apprently directly from VHS masters. Given that in 1972 (and indeed today) trailers were sent to cinemas and then thrown away afterwards, it's understandable that they couldn't find anything better than these.
Of more interest is a radio interview with Vonnegut by Australia's own Phillip Adams on his "Late Night Live" program where the two of them discuss the novel, the movie and a myriad of other topics. If you're not Australian, you really ought to visit www.abc.net.au and have a look at the LNL show....
SUMMARY
Definatley worth a look if you're a film buff. The casual younger viewer, previously fed on a diet of angst ridden war movies will probably find it all a liitle irrelevent or derivitive (when actually it's the other way round....), but as an example of faithful translation of a book into film, it is superlative.
Recommended.
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