Description
Amazon.com essential videoBilly Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) has a problem with time: he keeps jumping about in his own life, principally between three key scenes. The "present" is a kind of glowing suburban bliss involving a dutiful wife, large house, and presidency of the local Lions; the "past" is being a prisoner of World War II and exper
Amazon.com essential video
Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) has a problem with time: he keeps jumping about in his own life, principally between three key scenes. The "present" is a kind of glowing suburban bliss involving a dutiful wife, large house, and presidency of the local Lions; the "past" is being a prisoner of World War II and experiencing the firebombing of Dresden from the wrong side; the "future" takes place in a glass dome on the planet Tralfamadore, to which Billy has been mysteriously spirited along with the woman of his fantasies (Montana Wildhack, played by Valerie Perrine). It isn't meant to make too much sense, since the point is to represent a man (and a century) that has witnessed things too unbearable for a wholly sane person to make sense of. In fact author Kurt Vonnegut's anguished cry on the insanity of war is one of those completely unfilmable books, so director George Roy Hill gets points even for trying. The whole package is thought provoking in a wholly Vonnegutian way. All this, and Glenn Gould playing Bach as well. --Richard Farr
Description
No one will believe Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) when he says he has come "unstuck in time," reliving in aimless order all the events in his life. Living in seclusion in llium, New York, the timid widower is typing out a letter to the local paper about his time treks when suddenly, he is trapped behind German lines in wintry World War II Belgium. Next he is in his wedding bed with his wealthy weighty bride Valencia (Sharon Gans). Interspersed with his leapfrog adventures in time, Billy also finds himself being transported to and from the distant planet Tralfamadore, whose invisible inhabitants enclose him in a glass dome furnished with Sears Roebuck furniture and a kittenish Hollywood starlet (Valerie Perrine), to whom Billy is expected to make love. This big-budget production of Kurt Vonnegut's best-selling, semi-autographical novel, was shot in Czechoslovakia, Minnesota, and the Universial Studios sound stages, under a shroud of secrecy, with no publicist and little information provided to the press. The devout "Vonnegut cult" of college students feared that the complex, highly-stylizwd 1969 novel would defy screen adaptation. Critics differed on the bizarre, dreamlike film, but none could argue with the movie's message that the world is a collection of moments, "and if we're going to survive, it's up to us to concentrate on the good moments and ignore the bad."
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