No miscasts

There's a cognominal 1972 film based on "Slaughterhouse-five". When I first found out about its existance I really was enthusiastic, and hoped that this film would live up to the expectations. Now I have to say that in general it did.

The director of this film is George Roy Hill, creator of such masterpieces as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973) (with excellent actor duo of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in both of these movies).

"Slaughterhouse-five" didn't disillusion me as well. The main characters were played by almost unknown actors who coped with their duties in the best way possible. Firstly, Michael Sacks is exactly the same Billy Pilgrim which I imagined. The rest of the actors did just as well as he and everybody matches their roles perfectly.

This is the third film of George Roy Hill I saw and I'm impressed by his talent to film flawlessly so different screenplays. We know him as the director of awesome western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and 30s criminal adventure "The Sting". But it's in hundreds of times more difficult to shoot a science-fiction film and a film about Second World War at the same time. It must have taken a lot of anxiety and time to make that kind of movie look natural and well-balanced. Plus, it was 1972.

The only problem with this film is the eye-catching "low-budgetness" of it. Certainly, nobody expected something like Stanley Kubrick did in 1968, though it's more reasonable to avoid moments that involve great expenses and replace them with something inventive. It has to do especially with World War II and science-fiction parts. Nevertheless, the director's talent is apparent and Billy's jumps in time are shot ideally.

"Slaughterhouse-five" is very punctual screen adaptation, careful to details, dialogues, general atmosphere and humour. I recommend it to anyone who's not afraid of cardboard tanks and a flying saucer represented by a spot of light.

All this happened, more or less

So Kurt Vonnegut assures in the preface to the book. All the characters from the war parts of the novel are real (except for their names, of course), there really was a guy who was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his, as was the dying colonel whose last will was to call him Wild Bob. To enhance the sense of reality the author even puts himself in the book as an episodic character, some kind of literature cameo.

The description of German prison camp strikes by its naturality and ferocity. Billy Pilgrim with the rest of the Americans were newcomers there and they met English and Russian captives. A great difference between them is shown, the Russians were held in horrible conditions, while the Englishmen lived in proper buildings, had lots of food, coffee, sugar, chocolate and had trade relationship with their captors. "Slaughterhouse-five" is to be taken  as a significant war novel at least because American historians don't expatiate upon the bombing of Dresden.

As contrasted with the war storyline, Billy's life after that is shown as useless, lazy and sick existence, as an example of the Second Lost Generation. Billy Pilgrim married for convenience, got rich, had two children who didn't take him seriously, worked as an optometrist who took a nap right on the appointment with patient.

The narration in the book is well-balanced, following episodes are judiciously connected notwithstanding huge time gaps between them. For example the episode when Billy is taught to swim by sink-or-swim method by his father corresponds with disgusting description of being washed by Germans with the rest of the captives with cold water in the prison camp.

Vocabulary

1. limerick - лимерик (форма короткого юмористического стихотворения, построенного на обыгрывании бессмыслицы): "...I am reminded of the famous limerick"
2. soliliquize - говорить что-либо самому себе, произносить монолог: "There was a young man from Stamboul, Who soliloquized to his tool..."
3. lumbermill - лесопильный завод: "...I work in a lumbermill there..."
4. Mutt and Jeff - герои комикса, синоним для приема хороший/плохой полицейский: "We were Mutt and Jeff in the war."
5. rabid - бешеный: "The rabid little American I call Paul Lazarro in this book had about a quart of diamonds and emeralds and rubies and so on."
6. baby fat - жир, свойственный детям на ранних стадиях развития, также полнота, полученная в результате большого количества съеденного сладкого: "And we were flown to a rest camp in France, where we were fed chocolate malted milkshakes and other rich foods until we were all covered with baby fat."
7. smell of mustard gas and roses - запах горчичного газа и роз, употребляется для описания либо дыхания пьяницы, либо трупного запаха: "He doesn't mind the smell of mustard gas and roses."
8. a good dead - значительное количество: "I can't stand recorded music if I've been drinking a good deal."
9. eheu, fugaces labuntur anni - увы, быстро ускользают годы (лат.)
10. wheelbarrow - ручная телега: "...one guy who got into a lot of wine in Dresden, before it was bombed, and we had to take him home in a wheelbarrow."
11. horse-drawn - на конной тяге: "They had  a horse-drawn wagon full of clocks." 
12. jumbled and jangled - смешанный, запутанный: "It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre."
13. socked in - закрытый для самолетов (о аэропорте): "But Boston was socked in, so the plane flew straight to Frankfurt from Philadelphia."
14. wind-up - заводной: "Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but the wind-up kind, too."
15. carbon-monoxide - угарный газ: "While Billy was recuperating in a hospital in Vermont, his wife died accidentally of carbon-monoxide poisoning."
16. suction cup - присоска: "Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky."
17. rumpus room - "шумная комната": "Billy was working on this letter in the basement rumpus room of his empty house."
18. storage battery - аккумулятор: "It weighed as much as a storage battery."
19. oil burner - масляная лампа: "The oil burner had quit."
20. flibbertigibbet - легкомысленная женщина: "All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet."
21. to raise hell - поднимать шум: "Now she raised hell with him about the letter in the paper."
22. laughing stock - посмешище: "She said he was making a laughing stock of himself and everybody associated with him." 
23. to give somebody insights into - ввести в курс дела: "They were simply able to give him insights into what was really going on."
24. vox humana, vox celeste - "человеческий голос" и "небесный голос", регистры органа: "It had thirty-nine keys and two stops - vox humana and vox celeste."
25. olive-drab - серовато-зеленый: "Billy also had charge of a portable altar, an olive-drab attaché case with telescoping legs."
26. telescoping legs - складные ножки
27. furlough - отпуск: "When Billy got back from his furlough, there were orders for him to go overseas."
28. go overseas - отправится за океан (о Европе и Америке)
29. trench knife - окопный нож: "Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other."
30. low cut shoes - ботинки с низким подъемом: "On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral."
31. ditch - окоп: "Saved your life again, you dumb bastard, Weary said to Billy in the ditch."
32. to ditch - бросать (в беде): "And they ditched Weary and Billy in the creekbed."
33. creekbed - русло реки
34. to horse around - валять дурака: "When Weary was ditched, he would find somebody who was even more unpopular than himself, and he would horse around with that person for a while, pretending to be friendly."
35. blood gutter - жёлоб для сбора крови: "Weary scornfully bet Billy one time that he didn't even know what a blood gutter was."
36. to bundle up - укутываться: "Weary looked like Tweedledum or Tweedledee, all bundled up for battle."
37. Tweedledum and Tweedledee - комические персонажи из книги Л. Кэрролла "В Зазеркалье", олицетворяющие бесполезные споры по ничтожным поводам между людьми, политическими партиями и т.п.
38. steering wheel - руль: "Somewhere in there was an awful scene, with people expressing disgust for Billy and the woman, and Billy found himself out in his automobile, trying to find the steering wheel."
39. to scare stiff - напугать до смерти: "He was scared stiff, thought a ghastly mistake had been made."
40. to bring down the house - вызвать бурю апплодисментов: "His voice was a gorgeous instrument, it told jokes which brought down the house."
41. all fours - четвереньки: "Billy was down on all fours on the ice..."
42. post-coital - посткоитальный: "The Germans and the dog were engaged in a military operation, which had an amusingly self-explanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose name alone, when reported as news or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of post-coital satisfaction."
43. patched up - залатанный: "He had been wounded four times - and patched up, and sent back to war."
44. bug-eyed - с глазами навыкате: "And Weary, bug-eyed with terror, was being disarmed."
45. half-track - полугусеничная машина: "The curbs and sidewalks were crushed in many places, showing where the National Guard tanks and half-tracks had been."
46. to take a nap - вздремнуть: "He was under doctor's orders to take a nap every day." 
47. tri-focals - линзы для корректировки ближнего, среднего и дальнего зрения: "Billy took off his tri-focals and his coat and his necktie and his shoes, and he closed the venetian blinds and then the drapes, and he lay down on the outside of the coverlet." 
48. St. Elmo's fire - огонь Святого Эльма, разряд в форме светящихся пучков или кисточек, возникающий на острых концах высоких предметов (при большой напряжённости электрического поля в атмосфере: "Ever since Billy had been thrown into shrubbery for the sake of a picture, he had been seeing Saint Elmo's fire, a sort of electronic radiance around the heads of his companions and captors."
49. cock-eyed - косоглазый, косой: "Standing in its cock-eyed doorway was a German colonel."
50. boxcar - грузовой вагон: "Billy Pilgrim was packed into a boxcar with many other privates."
51. porthole - иллюминатор: "The saucer was one hundred feet in diameter, with portholes around its rim."
52. barbed wire - колючая проволока: "There was barbed wire between them."
53. to black out - потерять сознание: "Billy blacked out as he walked through gate after gate"
54. delousing station - пункт санобработки: "It was a delousing station through which all new prisoners had to pass."
55. to pull wires - нажимать на тайные пружины: "Derby had pulled political wires to get into the army at his age."
56. to lay out - составлять, разрабатывать: "Billy couldn't read Tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books were laid out - in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars."
57. blowout - прокол шины: "They had had seven blowouts on the way."
58. party favor - символический подарок гостям: "They had never had guests before, and they went to work like darling elves, sweeping, mopping, cooking, baking - making mattresses of straw and burlap bags, setting tables, putting party favors at each place."
59. burlap bag - мешок из грубой льняной ткани
60. chain-smoking - много курящий (буквально - закуривающий следующую сигарету от предыдущей): "The cigarettes belonged to Billy's chain-smoking mother."

The Three Musketeers, optometry and flying saucers

Oh, wait, it's a science-fiction book. Billy Pilgrim, the main character of the novel came unstuck in time. Billy experiences different events of his life out of sequence, he walks through a door in 1955 and comes out in another in 1941, he goes back through that door to find himself in 1963, he goes to sleep a senile widower and awakens on his wedding day. He is in a constant state of stage fright because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. Surely, that determines the nonlinear narrative. Along with the war parts, there are two other storylines, Billy's life before and after war and his experience of being kidnapped by a flying saucer to be displayed in the zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

In 1944 Billy Pilgrim is a preposterous twenty-one year old guy "with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches". He is hesitatory, weak-willed chaplain's assistant in the war who was taken prisoner by Germans and survived the bombing of Dresden. Billy was among four dazed wanderers after the German attack. There were also an antitank gunner Roland Weary and two infantry scouts. Weary was eighteen; he  had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean. He imagined himself in the future telling a "true war story" about the Three Musketeers (him and the scouts) and the weak college kid whose life they saved. But the Germans shot two scouts dead and captured Billy and Roland. Weary never reached Dresden: he died in the train of gangrene that had started in his mangled feet.

After the war Billy finished the School of Optometry, married its owner's daughter and became a rich man. His wife Valencia who wasn't pretty or slender died accidentally of carbon-monoxide poisoning while Billy was recuperating in a hospital. He has two children, Robert who fought in Vietnam and Barbara, on whose wedding day Billy was kidnapped by a flying saucer from Tralfamadore. He writes about this in the paper and speaks on the radio in a talk show trying to explain to Earthlings what he learned from aliens about time. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It's just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, they say. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. "So it goes", they say.

An anti-glacier novel

This book is "Slaughterhouse-five or The Children's Crusade" by Kurt Vonnegut and it begins like this: Listen! Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

In 1969 American science-fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote a war novel based on his own experiences as a prisoner of war during the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II. Historical background: In February 1945 when the war was close to its end and the outcome was apparent, American and British bombers dropped almost four thousand bombs on the city. Dresden was an open city. It was undefended and contained no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.

In 1967 Kurt Vonnegut with his old war buddy went back to Dresden to write a book he had been unsuccessfully trying to finish since 1945. Over the years, the writer told that the main thing he was working on was a book about Dresden. At first he thought it would be easy to write about this but he wrote five thousand pages and threw all away. Harrison Starr, the movie-maker heard that Vonnegut was writing an anti-war novel and asked him: "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?". What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers.

The outline of this book was on the back of a roll of wallpaper, the writer used his daughter's crayons to draw lines on it, different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, the lines of characters met, stopped, intercrossed then they passed through cross-hatching of the destruction of Dresden and not many of them came out the other side.

He decided to call his novel "The Children's Crusade" because they had been the youth, just babies, who fought in the war, he remembered (the real Children's Crusade started in 1213 when two monks got the idea of raising armies of children and selling them in North Africa as slaves; so they did, though half of them drowned in shipwrecks).

"Slaughterhouse-five" is often considered as Kurt Vonnegut's best book, though the author himself called it a failure. All this happened, more or less, he says.