So, it’s December now and I thought that this would be a year (like most) which would pass on without me having to cry about watching a movie and lie about not crying about it later.
Like how most grown men do.
But I was proven wrong, like how most grown men are (often).
So, I had read Slaughterhouse-5, sometime just after I could squeeze in a membership in a decent library to which I could cycle to.
Usually, people who do read books, talk about reading slaughterhouse-five in college. Others would have had a passing glimpse of the Cat’s Cradle cover, those folks ended up with an MBA.
Nowadays, people look at you as a genius if you remember that if you merely remember the author and the book title. They might even give you a prize for it.
So it goes.
Nevertheless, nothing ever prepared me (even reading Slaughterhouse-five) for Bob Weide’s documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time. Otherwise, I would have carried a box of tissues with me.
The tears came not only because of the realization of the fact this was a thoughtful, cheerful and wonderful documentary on arguably America’s greatest man of letters of the 20th century.
Ok side note:
how to determine if you are really reading the greatest author of your generation?
Answer: If your parents have heard of him/her; then better throw the book away, far away.
Side note ends.
The tears came because, it is possible to lead a fruitful life by a man of letters (as this documentary shows).
Vonnegut Jr, died in 2007, he was eighty-four and he had retired ten years earlier. He regarded life very seriously and hence wrote funny novels about it.
The tears came because, any career length feature about Vonnegut would have simply been awe-inspiring.
But this doc which was forty years in the making where the writer-director is himself a character (a trait Bob inherits from Vonnegut) and makes it another great film about family, friendship, loneliness and the struggle of the creative process.
Just like Simla Special.
Ok, that was supposed to have been my punchline.
So, do yourself a favor and use the weekend to watch Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time.
Like most of the movies that matter, this is not on any OTT that you maybe paying precious money on.
That’s life, spending on all the wrong things, when all the right things are for free.
Simla Special can be watched for free on YouTube.
If you don’t know how to get hold of a copy of Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, you are using the internet wrong.
So it goes.
The Lowly Laureate 