Am I the only one that doesn't get The Deer Hunter?

I feel like I am the only person who has just not liked this movie at all, i'd like to say i've watched my fair share of movies but usually for the most part enjoy the films that are generally held to a very high standard such as The Deer Hunter. While I get what the movie was going for in all the scenes, i just felt very disconnected and not invested in any of the characters.

The fact that the movie is 3 hours long does not bother me, it was how the 3 hours was used. The wedding scene that made up 40ish minutes felt like a drag. I know it was supposed to develop character for the rest of the movie but it just didn't work for me. I didn't feel any connection to any of the characters friendships in the wedding scenes or any of the pre/after war scenes, they felt more like a bunch of bogans messing around. The interactions they have with each other can't even be really described, they just blabber, yell and stroll around. With some important tid bits here and there with Nick and Michael sharing a moment alone and Deniro's character refusing to give his boots.

The captured sequence was truly riveting though I would give it that, the main theme of the film is a nice listen too.

I didn't come into the movie expecting a jam packed action movie, I know its a movie more so about going to the war itself and the repercussions that followed.

Call me a mad man but I just did not buy most of the things in this movie, even the supposedly heart breaking performances by streep, deniro and walken.

i never seen the movie or never heard of the movie only heard of a video game :/

I was maybe too young when I tried to watch it but I ended up turning it off with like 10 minutes left lmao.

One of my first posts here, was actually about The Deer Hunter and the runtime was definitely an issue for me too.

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A group of guys from Russian descent living and working in a steel factory in a small American town. What do they have? Their friendship. They work in the same factory, drink in the same bar and see the same people everyday. Like everyone else, they have distinct personalities, some are more open mouthed, like having fun, others are more reserved. Some like activities like hunting for the fun of being together, fraternizing, others like those activities for the sport and they take it seriously. Some are okay with what they have, the same factory, the same faces, others are not so okay and want to see something new, experience something different, so, they go to this war, it was in a way a test to their brotherhood, and a personal test and to implement a will (thought) some have. This tale is what comes back, and what doesn't come back. Of how that war changed these individuals and also their collective. This film also talks about the women in that small town, their view, their struggle, their combined destiny. The weeding scene, the bar scenes, it's all made to show that brotherhood, it's made to show how those people act, how they talk, how they behave, how they see themselves and others, it's all a story in the same harsh environment. See the film Out of the Furnace, it's the same thing only easier to comprehend and with vengeance in the mixture. It's not rocket science, it's a side of America, nothing else.

This is not about The Deer Hunter per se (it is among my favourite films), but I’m frowning increasingly frustrated with this line of criticism, ie that one “relate to/connect to the characters”. It’s a kind of “therapeutic” turn in film. Some films actively play on the expectations regarding who the audience identifies with, such as Funny Games, but I think only enjoying films where you “identify” with characters is a little reductive, no? I love all iterations of Harris’ Lecter (though Hannibal beats The Silence of the Lambs) and enjoy, in a sense, watching the persona of Lecter in action, but that’s not to say that I “connect” or “identify” with him, whatever is implied by that.

Apart from the above, on the film itself: I don’t know your age, but it’s highly unlikely that, unless you’re in the military like my father or know someone who is, you can “relate” to the kinds of events The Deer Hunter concerns in any film, regardless who made it and how. Because otherwise you probably wouldn’t have started a thread like that. The lack of “connection” to characters to me is an especially perplexing charge to level against a war film, which by definition addresses the most extreme circumstances humans can experience, pretty much. Do you “relate” to Sophie’s Choice, Schindler’s List, The Pianist?

Your post comes off as rather juvenile and simplistic. It’s fine not to like The Deer Hunter - some people definitely prefer the “action-packed” Apocalypse Now and the like, and in some cases, I do that myself - but the way you explain/justify your reasoning is off-putting, I won’t lie.

But then again, I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum when I hardly ever “relate” to characters or people, unless it’s something like Christine (2016), so I can’t talk.

Sorry but i never said i wanted to "relate" with the characters. I wasn't buying their friendship, I didn't feel like they were actually friends. There are countless movies where the characters are FAR from "relatable" but are still likeable or atleast you can route for them or understand them. No I don't relate to Sophie’s Choice, Schindler’s List, The Pianist. But i sure was invested into the main characters unlike the deer hunter. In other war movies, I was invested with Tom Hanks in Private Ryan, Dafoe and Berenger in Platoon. Just wanted to make that clear, never wanted to RELATE to the characters, just wanted a reason to like them. The thing is that i knew which scenes were supposed to make me like them and understand them more but just didn't. The cast wasn't necessarily the issue i thought, but rather the writing of the story itself. For most of the pre-war scenes it felt like it was scriptless. So please help me out here if this is indeed one of your favourite films.

I can see all these things, but the way that the film goes about it and the time it takes just didn't work for me.

Well, seeing as I’m not being paid for this and it’s the least of my worries whether you like The Deer Hunter, I’m not sure my time will be spent wisely doing that.

I think this is a very relative thing you’re referring to. I don’t think the protagonists are meant to be likeable, least of all Michael. I mean, the guy ****s the girl his best friend is obsessed with, both before and after his death, how likeable are we talking?

I don’t think you’re meant to like them, even without the obvious repercussions that people stop being likeable once they’re thrust into life-changing circumstances like war, so I think you’re going in with the wrong expectations.

Regarding “actually friends”, only Nick and Michael are lifelong ride-or-die friends, the rest are mere casual acquaintances who then bond through shared experiences.

Michael is attached to Nick, sure, but as I read it, he mostly tries to “save” him to get the high out of it and assuage his guilt about the others who didn’t survive and especially about ****ing Linda. Nothing particularly deep there, no more than elsewhere, anyway, but I don’t see why one wouldn’t think that Michael and Nick are very much “real” friends.

Bottom line is, you don’t like The Deer Hunter, “peace be with you”. Doubt one’s mind can be changed on these things. I understand the rationale behind a thread like “This is why I think people like this film, but I can’t relate”, but what you’re getting at is much more like “Prove me wrong/convince me otherwise”, which people have no interest/“skin” in doing.

All that said, I don’t think it’s the best film ever made, or anything like that. But your points read to me like nitpicking or, in a way, finding reasons not to like it.

Been a while since I've seen the movie, but the first hour or so (including the wedding sequence) is supposed to establish the rhythms of the community so you can get a sense of what's being disrupted when they go to war. You can quibble with the execution but the purpose of those sections is pretty clear. Even if the characters' experiences are not innately relatable, the movie is doing the legwork to get you to empathize with them.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "got." I feel like I "got" it in the sense of understanding what it was trying to do, but I didn't "get" it in that I didn't find it particularly engaging.

I think The Deer Hunter sparks more of these kinds of discussions than most alleged classics, for sure. It's trying to do something difficult, I think, so it's a bit of a high-wire act and it seems to really land for some people and come off as pretty dull to others.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? I’m inclined to agree, intuitively speaking, but it also seems to me that it is a fairly straightforward “war” film - what do you think it’s “trying to do”?

Depict long-term PTSD and the difficulty of reintegrating into society afterwards.

I think maybe that's why it got/gets a lot of credit: I assume it was one of the earlier films to show this side of war, the ripple effect as opposed to the war itself.

I agree with this. Although it’s straightforward narratively. It’s not dealing with the PTSD in a straightforward way. There are no shrinks or long conversations about the war. These guys are going about their life but they feel largely disfunctional. I think the characters can be really grating and, I think, that’s what turns a lot of people off from the movie. It most certainly would have me a few years ago, but I think I have grown into weirdly liking this kind of arrested adolescence in movies.

I agree that one of the notable elements of Deer Hunter was in understanding the psychological terrain of its soldier characters--pushing the actual war itself to the side to instead attempt to map out what leads these men to sign up to fight for their country, how they use their relationships to get through the experience, and how the war will never leave them once it ends.



What deepens the effect of this approach I think, is similarly pushing away the tendency of American films to condense their pre-war scenes into little vignettes and soundbites to introduce characters. No matter how well written, having a film excise all of the smaller moments that actually compose the majority of the lives that are being left behind, introduces an element of the kind of artifice the Deer Hunter is hoping to shake off. It is after all not only a movie about de-mythologizing the cinematic idea of war, but it also is de-mythologizing the way American life is portrayed in films. By making the choice to simply show us one event packed day in the lives of these men (working, drinking, singing, drinking, getting married, drinking, drinking and hunting), we can observe their existence, their customs, they way they relate to eachother and their surroundings and not simply their 'story'.



And, for all of the complaints this opening stretch of the film so frequently gets, its not like what is happening is just Jeanne Dielmann type monotony. The whole pre-war segment of The Deer Hunter is still rigorously designed, almost like a really good short story by a Hemmingway or Carver or O'Connor. Nearly every detail actually matters in the grand scheme of understanding these characters and this town. It just doesn't choose to call great attention to this because it has a rambling and mumbling quality that makes it always feel as if each moment is happening naturally, is being lived in that very moment, possibly even improvised, to such a level of success I can almost understand people questioning if there is any scaffolding at all keeping these scenes as a cohesive whole, and questioning why it couldn't all be pared down to ten minutes.


Obviously, I've never really understood the resistance so many have to just letting themselves live alongside of these characters for this stretch of the film. I think a lot of the problem seems to be these characters don't seem to be behaving as if they are aware they are in a narrative. They are actively behaving in ways that won't allow any kind of narrative concision. We are forced to just observe them, and then we are expected to understand who they are by how we have seen them behave. There aren't many big moments to give us a shortcut to pull us into their headspace (the boot scene, the soldier scene are the only two which seem to have any real traditional dramatic structure). Which makes me wonder, as I always do when we are talking about the pros and cons of storytelling, if narrative just might have the corrosive effect of making us forget what real life actually looks and feels like, ultimately making us less able to empathize with it when we see it laid out naked up their on the big screen. Maybe that's a bit too extreme a way to put it, but it definitely feels that way to me sometimes.

Yes, that’s a very reasonable take.

The wedding scene is way too long. It could have used some editing to accentuate the more important moments during the wedding, such as "The Green Beret" scene.

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True. I suppose there’s an “exotic” element to it - how weird is it to have a Russian Orthodox wedding in a US film, especially in those days?

I guess it’s meant to illustrate the Linda/Mike/Nick love triangle.

It establishes this as well as their relationship to their community, customs, religion, family, friends, feelings of country etc. It lets us see these ordinary lives which are about to be ruptured, exactly as they are, and in as close to real time as the film allows. It's why when we end up abruptly cutting from Pennsylvania to the war, and specifically the shot of DeNiro (now almost unrecognizable), screaming with a flame thrower, he is not so subtly burning down everything we have just so slowly and methodically and gently been introduced to. The shock of such a dramatic image is allowed to sear even deeper because of how resistant the film has been up to this point to such dramatic histrionics.



As far as I'm concerned, the wedding scene is the absolutely perfect set up for everything that follows. To subtract anything from it would diminish both the power and the subtlety of the film.

I agree. Don’t get me wrong, I love everything about that film, every little bit of it. Was just trying to have an open mind.