Mon 14 Apr 2008
I had a lot of apprehension and difficulty watching this film. I heard about how great a movie it was, but had never had a chance to see it. I girded myself for the graphic violence and long running time of the movie and sat down to watch it. I watched it over 2 sittings and was not disappointed. The Deer Hunter is a great movie about the Vietnam War and how it affected people back home and the soldiers who had to endure the horrors. It stands as one of the great films about Vietnam along with Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Platoon.
The Deer Hunter focuses on a group of good friends from a steel town in Pennsylvania who have grown up together and now work in the steel mill. Director Michael Cimino gives us the time we need to get to know the characters and their relationship with each other. Three events are happening in the opening scenes – one of the friends is getting ready to marry his pregnant girlfriend and the friends are getting ready to go deer hunting the next day. It is also the final party before 3 of them go to Vietnam. The scenes of the pre-wedding celebrations and the deer hunt really give us an idea how this small mining town shapes the people in it and their relationships. The three friends Michael (De Niro), Nick (Chritopher Walken) and Steven (the groom, Steven Savage) don’t know what to expect but they seem to have a good time together before they go, drinking all the way from the wedding into the deer hunt the next day. The scene abruptly changes to the obligatory choppers beating the air above a Vietnamese village about to be destroyed.
The rest of the movie chronicles the horrors they are forced to endure as soldiers, then as prisoners of war, and then as civilians. Two of the friends return to the states changed beyond repair, and Michael even returns to the war zone to try and bring Nick back with him. There are some famous and disturbing scenes involving Russian roulette that are powerful but difficult to watch.
The Deer Hunter was nominated in 1979 for nine academy awards, and won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, as well as Best Sound and Editing. DeNiro and Meryl Streep (in her second feature film) were also nominated. It clocks in at over 3 hours, and this makes it such a wonderful film, as the viewer is given the extra time to really get to know the characters and feel for them when the go through their difficult experiences. The families and friends back home are also shown before and after the friends return and how they deal with the losses they experience second-hand. Great acting and wonderful directing make this movie a classic, although not an easy to watch one, and not one I want to see again in the near future. Four Stars
