Mark Reviews Movies: KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 18, 2021

"I hope you love each other as much as I love both of you," says Kurt Vonnegut on an answering machine. The message arrives about four years before the author's death at the age of 84. He would laugh about dying in those final years, jokingly announcing, at one of his regular lectures, his plans to sue the manufacturer of the cigarettes he chain-smoked since around the time he became a teenager. The label on the package says these things will kill you, but here he is, still alive and kicking and ready to be done with it all.

There's that Vonnegut—sarcastic, superficially nihilistic, self-deprecating, appearing a bit stand-offish, perhaps, if one takes statements like his death wish a bit too seriously. Then, there's the Vonnegut who left that answering machine message to director Robert B. Weide and the filmmaker's wife. Weide had just won an award for his work in television. In theory, he should have instead been working on a documentary about Vonnegut, which he started all the way back in 1988. Vonnegut doesn't mention it, but the planned film still sat there in Weide's mind.

Fifteen years later, the piece was still incomplete, but at that point, what's another year or more to keep working on it? Vonnegut was, indeed, still alive and kicking at the time, was still sending Weide footage of the various talks the author would give, and was about to start writing essays for a political magazine. There's always more time, right?

There wouldn't be much more for Vonnegut, of course, and even after the author's death in 2007, Weide continued to sit on his documentary, for reasons that become painfully clear as this documentary—the one the filmmaker has been working on for more than 30 years—unfolds. The film is called Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, and it's a thoughtful, effective, and affecting eulogy for a beloved author, obviously, and also for a dear, unexpected friend.

Weide introduces his decades-long effort, which was completed with some aid by co-director Don Argott. Sitting in front of the camera, the filmmaker experiences some déjà vu. He has been in this situation a few times already—sitting in front of a camera, preparing to introduce the finished project that would turn out not to be ready just yet, with the various shirts he was wearing during each of those session serving as the major difference in his mind. Memory is funny like that, and it was funny for Vonnegut, too—if only because he could either find the humor, as dark as it often was, in what he had experienced or constantly break down in tears.

We get that sense from Weide throughout this film, as well. He admired and adored Vonnegut as an author, before he could ever dream of having the opportunity to meet his literary idol, and he recalls a beautifully melancholy story about having dinner with the man, who was now one of his longest and most constant friends, and walking him home shortly before Vonnegut's death. Weide didn't know why at the moment (and doesn't really know now, either), but he felt compelled to say to Vonnegut, "I love you" (He mildly beats himself up for not being brave enough to skip the "man" after those three words).

This film, obviously, is not some kind of dry, straightforward, and objective account of a literary figure. It might have been, had Weide finished it back in those early years of interviewing Vonnegut on a train, traveling to the author's hometown of Indianapolis, and piecing together a basic biography from those scenes, interviews with expert talking heads, and archival photos and footage. Those elements are here, of course, but they're guided by a filmmaker who's putting together, not only the biography of an important cultural subject, but also the timeline, the evolution, and the importance of a friendship.

That tone and that intent give every moment of this film—even the ones that follow the usual formula of biographical documentary—an unexpected weight. Weide is almost as vital a figure in his own film as Vonnegut, who gives the filmmaker almost unrestricted access to just about every aspect of his life and work over the decades.

There are those interviews, on the train (with the author's older brother) and at his childhood home (where Weide also tags along with a camera for a high school reunion) and with his children (who are unflinching in their honesty about growing up with a man whose mood was dictated by how much work he had completed each day). There's access to every draft of Slaughterhouse-Five, the semi-autobiographical novel that would propel him to fame in 1969 and beyond. Examining the process, we can see how the author attempts to find the structure and voice of the book that would allow him to exorcise the trauma he experienced as a soldier and POW during World War II.

The whole of the film, really, is a similar examination of the man. Weide does eventually start a more straightforward narrative of Vonnegut's life, but certain details are withheld or not focused upon until later. This makes sense within the larger scheme of the documentary, since it's framed as Weide's own experiences with his subject.

On that return visit to his childhood home, for example, Vonnegut offers nothing but bright and happy memories of growing up—especially under the care and affection of his older sister. As a fan and avid reader of the author since high school, Weide already knew the importance of the relationship between Vonnegut and his sister. Decades later, observing the filmmaker edit the film, we watch as Weide notices tiny moments in which his subject's smiling visage drops, revealing how deep the grief of that loss—and, undoubtedly, the others that would come before Vonnegut's own death—has remained.

That sense of Vonnegut's loneliness only escalates as the years pass, and we can't help but hear a tinge of something—regret or disappointment in himself or maybe a hint of failure—in Weide's narration, as he relates such anecdotes, reads Vonnegut's letters to him, and listens to other phone messages. The filmmaker didn't finish this project in time for the author to see it, Weide has finished the intimate Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, in order for us to see Vonnegut as a larger-than-life personality, a wounded man persevering through his work, and a true friend.

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