These simultaneous aspects are depicted here as seen by the people closest to him: his daughters, his friends, the four nephews he took in when his sister died. This is Vonnegut as jobbing writer, failed car salesman, unlikely pop culture icon, best-selling novelist, has-been, resurgent institution, sibling, deceased, fictionalized version of himself through his alter-ego, Kilgore Trout. The books are there as a way to understand Vonnegut, rather than turning him in to a doorway into the literature.īut even then they are peripheral to Vonnegut the man.
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This is about the man, and Weide and Argott construct his life from an extensive archive of home movies, photographs, and assorted recordings, but also from those close to him, most especially his family. For a man whose books are so effortlessly hilarious, his life was so filled with tragedy (far more than his nightmarish and career-illuminating experience as a prisoner-of-war in Dresden during World War II). Talk about polar opposites: David, who has found meanspirited comedy in everyday mundanities, and Vonnegut, who tried to find levity in grand, cosmic despair. He may be a possibly surprising choice, having cut his teeth on heavy metal docs like Last Days Here and Lamb of God's As the Palaces Burn, but then Weide has spent much of the duration of making his Vonnegut documentary in a lengthy and fruitful working relationship with Larry David. Wisely, he shares directing credit with Don Argott, to permit for some distance. So this isn't Weide inserting himself into the story of the great writer, but acknowledging that the observer affects the phenomenon observed. It may be the only way to realistically approach the material, since Vonnegut himself so constantly interwove autobiography and self-critique. Weide's somewhat-begrudging retelling of his 33-year effort to tell the story of Vonnegut. What Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time really seeks to be is documentarian Robert B. The writer of Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five would probably appreciate that contradiction, or a film existing in multiple spaces at once. This is a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut. This is not a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut.