Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

From the Film's Official Website

Kurt Vonnegut was an unconventional writer, his work equal parts funny, serious, grim, and lighthearted; at the center of every one of his books is both an adulation for the best of humanity and a disappointment at our seeming inability to embrace that side of our nature. Such an unique writer, therefore, deserves nothing short of a unique documentary about his life and work, and Robert Weide's Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is that documentary.

The documentary is unconventional in that, while it purports to be the definitive documentary on the life and work of its eponymous subject, it's actually much more than that. In addition to being that documentary, it is also the story of a long-time friendship between the documentary's director and its subject.

Vonnegut and Weide, upon making one another's acquaintance, quickly bring each other into their respective karasses, and their lives remain perpetually intertwined for the remainder of Vonnegut's life and the years following Weide's struggle to complete this project. Taking a cue from Vonnegut's own final novel, Timequake, in which the central narrative becomes intermingled with asides by its author on the struggle to complete the book, Weide does the same. Throughout the documentary, he tells the story of Vonnegut's career—its promising start, it's hard-slog of a middle, and its final skyrocket of success upon the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, which kept him atop the bestseller list for the rest of his career—while also recounting his own story of how he and Vonnegut became friends.

Moments of utter heartbreak dot the film, both in Vonnegut's life and in Weide's own. Yet, at the end, the picture one comes away with is a twofold story of friendship and hope against adversity. This film serves as both the seminal tribute to one of America's greatest writers and a picture of a tender, warm sincere friendship between two kindred spirits and the wisdom one can gain from such a bond.

If you are a Vonnegut fan and have yet to see this film, you will not be disappointed. You'll come away with a full three-dimensional portrait of the author of Slaughterhouse-Five. But even if you're not, you will find yourself moved by the human story this film captures.