Director: Robert B. Weide, Don Argott
Cast: Kurt Vonnegut, Robert B. Weide, Jerome Klinkowitz, Sidney Offit
Have I Seen it Before: Never, but it’s been on my radar for what seems like forever, or at least since I catalogued a poster for the film at Circle.
Did I Like It: I’m left slightly torn by this one. The uninitiated will learn the bullet points of Vonnegut’s life, although not much more than the domestic details that wouldn’t have already been learned from reading Slaughterhouse Five. Weide is given a wide degree of access to Vonnegut, and we see flashes of him outside of the books. He was so completely obliterated by the sins of the second Bush administration, one can’t help but wonder what he might have had to say about the horrors of the now, even if it meant he had to suffer the indignity of living to 100. I walk away from the film feeling as if I got to know Vonnegut a bit better, and liking him all the more.
But that’s also where the problem (possibly) comes into play. Is this a film about the wonder that was Vonnegut, or is it a film about Weide’s friendship with Vonnegut over the attempts to make the film. Normally, I would be tempted to say that if its the first, its a fairly flawed film, with the documentarian intruding on the documentary at hand, even as he is not terribly insistent in his objections to such a development.
With a directing partner in tow, though, I’m prepared to forgive the film for becoming a little bit about Weide as well as Vonnegut. It does tend to give the film an occasional lack of focus, but this proves to be a slight, and not fatal flaw in an film that otherwise proves to be essential watchign for anyone interested in Vonnegut, his work, or American letters at large.