The Deer Hunter

I grew up in an insular neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. It was a neighborhood that, despite being adjacent to the urban sprawl, was not unlike the unnamed industrial town in 'The Deer Hunter,' a community that would be decimated by the Vietnam war.

Though I was born at the very end of the conflict, I vividly remember the stories I was told as a child by elder family and friends who had lost loved ones in Vietnam. I don't know how many of the details I was spared because of my age, but those stories and the sadness of those who told them still haunt me. Perhaps as a result of these memories, I'm often struck by how movies tend to focus much more on the most vicious carnage meted out by those on the frontlines, rather those back home who have to bury the dead. Vietnam obviously transformed the soldiers who fought it, but it also had an profound effect on those they left behind back home.

'The Deer Hunter' is the rare war film to focus more on that emotional devastation instead of the visceral gruel. Complex, extraordinarily acted and almost entirely without sentiment, it was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won five, including Best Director (for Michael Cimino), Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken) and Best Picture. But unlike many other epics smothered by awards but ultimately rendered irrelevant as the years pass on, 'The Deer Hunter' remains as potent and profound as it was when it blind-sided audiences and critics alike back in 1978. It is also a film you only have to see once, because you won't forget it once you do.

Cimino structures his 182-minute film in three strict acts. Each works as a self-contained movement, but together they create an incredibly powerful, cohesive piece of music. The first act seems to meander, but the lulls are deceptive. We meet six friends on the eve of a wedding. Michael (Robert De Niro) is the leader; Nick (Christopher Walken) his faithful best friend; and Steven (John Savage), who is about to marry his high school sweetheart Angela (Rutanya Alda). All three have enlisted, and will be leaving for Vietnam only a day after the honeymoon. Declining to serve are the volatile Stanley (the late John Cazale), and carefree party boys John (George Dzundza) and Axel (Chuck Aspegren), whose cheerful revelry seems to mask a growing sense of guilt over staying behind. And had it been a normal year, Michael and Nick would probably have been fighting over Linda (Meryl Streep), who wants to marry Nick but, as it soon becomes quite clear, really loves Michael.

All of these details are never explained with bad exposition, nor dramatized as soap opera. They simply unfold over the course of the men's last two days together, as they dance the night away, engage in drunken frat-boy shenanigans, and go on one last of their deer hunts in the mountains. With these scenes alone, which are so seemingly innocuous, Cimino earned his Oscar. He so perfectly modulates the characters and develops their inter-relationships that the reality created is no longer a two-dimensional image on the screen, but an experience happening to us. So much so that one simple, unpretentious final cut to Vietnam feels like a detonation.

The second act begins appropriately enough with an explosion. The film's combat scenes are famous, largely for Cimino's use of Russian Roulette as a metaphor for the many horrors inflicted in Vietnam. These scenes are simply harrowing, and it is not with a hip smirk that I say I really never want to see them again. Yet it is not violence, or gore, that unsettles -- in fact, the film is rather subtle in this regard (at least compared to such graphic horror shows as 'Saving Private Ryan'). Instead, it is the intensity that disturbs. We are so under the skin with these characters we want to turn away from the screen both to spare them their fates, and us the torture of watching them unfold. The less said about what happens next, the better. Simply put, things won't necessarily turn out as you may expect them to -- 'The Deer Hunter' is never a predictable war film.

The film's final act is, in some ways, the most painful. Michael will return home and attempt to reconstruct the pieces of his life. But the nervous hugs and well-meaning smiles of family and friends are only more isolating. Returning to normalcy becomes impossible. Even the embrace of Linda cannot cure the ills inside. Lost and soulless, Michael will eventually be drawn back to Vietnam, in an attempt to rescue Nick. But sometimes, the depth of damage done leaves no hope for salvation.

The concluding scenes of 'The Deer Hunter' caused great controversy at the time of the film's release, and remain highly debated today. To what purpose was the film's metaphor of Russian Roulette? For me, the scenes are not about the fate of Nick, but America. "One shot is what it's all about," is the film's most famous line. "A deer has to be taken down with one shot." Michael's eventual journey to bring Nick home and restore things to the way they used to be, will, however noble, ultimately prove futile. And how Cimino, in the film's concluding scenes, finally shatters this wish-fulfillment fantasy remains truly unforgettable. For this alone, 'The Deer Hunter' secures its place as a landmark achievement in modern Hollywood cinema.