I felt compelled to sign back into IMDb after many, many years so I could write a review of this film from Robert Weide. I always read the user reviews on IMDb prior to watching anything, and was expecting to see a different film based on some of the negative reviews. I signed on to give much deserved credit to the filmmaker. For starters, I'd like to point out that I am
not a diehard Vonnegut fan, and didn't know anything about his personal life whatsoever prior to watching this; my general knowledge of Vonnegut has been more or less a passive enjoyment of his novels. If you're preparing to watch a Ken Burns-style documentary, this is not what you're going to watch. Robert Weide makes this evident at the beginning; the almost 40 year project evolved into a significant friendship between Vonnegut and the filmmaker. The mutual respect, love and admiration between these two was crafted into a touching film. You will learn a lot about Vonnegut's life, but most importantly, and what I think is what made this so moving to watch, was Weide's unique ability to portray Vonnegut on a human level. There is a sincere and deeply moving balance of Vonnegut's life chronicles, personal and professional relationships, and unscripted moments which Weide sews into a chaotic, but beautiful quilt of Vonnegut's life. I can see how and why this film took so long to create; it would be difficult to whittle down Vonnegut's professional life alone to a two hour timeframe, nevertheless having to account for the almost life-long friendship the filmmaker had with him. I laughed, I cried, I learned, and I'm currently pulling out basement boxes of books to find my Vonnegut novels to reread again, but this time with a renewed sense of excitement for who he really was as a writer, father, son, friend, veteran, teacher - a human. I think this is about as much as a viewer could ask from a movie, no? Mr. Weide, thank you for bringing Vonnegut back to life!
Review of Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
