Reading "Slaughterhouse-Five" had always reminded me of something I could not place. Finally, after Chapter 8, I realized of how similar it was to the movie "Big Fish". Directed by Tim Burton and starred by Ewan McGregor, it constantly goes back and forward in time, telling the experiences of Edward Bloom (McGregor´s character) as a young man and his life as an old man, struggling to earn the trust of his son, Will. Much like Barbara (Pilgrim´s daughter), Will has a hard time believing his father´s fantastic tales. Instead of talking about aliens, Edward exaggerates everything. Just like Billy, Edward was a war veteran (Vietnam war, however), but he says he was saved by Siamese Japanese twins, working as entertainment for soldiers. He also told Will that time actually stopped for everyone but him the first time he saw his mother (another resemblance), that his best friend was a giant, and that he knew a town that could not be found unless you were lost. Time is a recurrent theme, for not only did time stop but he knew characters that were not influenced by it. As a kid, he met an old witch. Their lives crossed paths some 15 years later, and this same witch was now 10 years old. When they met for a third time, the witch was now as old as before. She was, you could say, "unstuck in time".
The significance of time does not stop there-when Edward first met the witch he saw his death in her eyes. In other words, much like Billy, Edward knew the exact time and place of his death. This made him fearless and brave, for he knew that whatever difficulty came his way would not be his time of death. Billy lived in the same way, unafraid of death and simply waiting for the day to arrive. Frankly, I was surprised of just how similar they were. I researched to see if the movie was based on Vonnegut´s work, but it is not. I guess that you really can´t write something completely innovative.
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