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The Deer Hunter, 1978
Among a larger group of friends are three men, Nick (Christopher Walken), Mike (Robert De Niro), and Steve (John Savage), who are slated to leave for service in the Vietnam War. After a boistrous wedding between Steve and Angela (Rutanya Alda). Before they leave, Nick asks Linda (Meryl Streep) to marry him and she agrees. After a final deer hunt as a group we jump to their time in Vietnam where the men endure horrific treatment. After returning from the war, their experiences haunt them (and their loved ones) in different ways.
I have avoided watching this movie for a long, long time. It's not a good sign when even the cover of a film gives you the shivers. As I imagined, this film was both incredibly strong and it really hit me on an emotional level.
There is something amazing when a director is able to hit that special pace where an hour can feel like nothing at all. This is probably one of the shortest feeling 3 hour films I've ever seen. In my brain, there were three main parts (the wedding, the war, the final act), and the arc between them managed to both fly by and build suspense.
I think that what this film best captured for me was the way that surviving an intense experience changes who you are. It doesn't matter which man breaks, which man dissociates, or which man stays "strong"--in the end their trauma lives inside of them and unavoidably rears its head in even the smallest of moments. Of the three men, Mike is the one who comes out of the experience the most "normal", and yet he has also been fundamentally altered. And whatever degree of normalcy he can hold onto is further shaken by the ripple effect that everything has had on his friends from the war and those left back at home.
There is also a powerful exploration of violence--what it means to witness it and the capacity for it. Mike has a rule about always taking a deer with one shot, and when the film gets into the Vietnam sequences and the infamous Russian roulette scenes, the idea of "one shot" adopts a new meaning. In an interesting dichotomy, after returning home from the war Mike has both an uncomfortable relationship with violence (finding himself unable to take a shot at a deer) and an explosive reaction to encountering it (majorly losing his cool when one friend jokingly points a pistol at another).
The performances are, of course, amazing. I'm enjoying seeing more of De Niro's earlier work, and Walken's performance as Nick is heartbreaking and haunting. Meryl Streep is head-turning in her role as Linda and her presence on screen is undeniable. While the focus is obviously on the main characters, and specifically Mike, the film gives each character a moment--even if it's just a short, quiet sob alone in a kitchen--and it's a compliment to the entire supporting cast that all of the characters feel real and the connections between the larger group feel legitimate. You can feel the shift in the aftermath of the war, and there's a good deal of empathy to go around. Characters like Linda obviously didn't go through what Mike and Nick and Steve experienced, but they have also been impacted and as part of the landscape for the veterans, their pain also matters.
I haven't read anything about this film, and I'll be interested to hear what others have written. I did think that the Vietnamese characters were all of a similar type, but at the same time it reflects the experience of the characters. On the other hand, cruelty and atrocities were not only confined to one side of the conflict. I'm a bit torn on this aspect of the film.
This was a really hard movie to watch. The last two hours are varying degrees of pain and suffering. I sort of regret watching it so late at night and am now trying to use some comfort TV to regain my equilibrium. I'm not sure that I could watch it again anytime soon.
That said, this was an amazing film. I would unhesitatingly recommend it. I found no major flaws with it, aside from being put through the emotional wringer.
The Deer Hunter, 1978
Among a larger group of friends are three men, Nick (Christopher Walken), Mike (Robert De Niro), and Steve (John Savage), who are slated to leave for service in the Vietnam War. After a boistrous wedding between Steve and Angela (Rutanya Alda). Before they leave, Nick asks Linda (Meryl Streep) to marry him and she agrees. After a final deer hunt as a group we jump to their time in Vietnam where the men endure horrific treatment. After returning from the war, their experiences haunt them (and their loved ones) in different ways.
I have avoided watching this movie for a long, long time. It's not a good sign when even the cover of a film gives you the shivers. As I imagined, this film was both incredibly strong and it really hit me on an emotional level.
There is something amazing when a director is able to hit that special pace where an hour can feel like nothing at all. This is probably one of the shortest feeling 3 hour films I've ever seen. In my brain, there were three main parts (the wedding, the war, the final act), and the arc between them managed to both fly by and build suspense.
I think that what this film best captured for me was the way that surviving an intense experience changes who you are. It doesn't matter which man breaks, which man dissociates, or which man stays "strong"--in the end their trauma lives inside of them and unavoidably rears its head in even the smallest of moments. Of the three men, Mike is the one who comes out of the experience the most "normal", and yet he has also been fundamentally altered. And whatever degree of normalcy he can hold onto is further shaken by the ripple effect that everything has had on his friends from the war and those left back at home.
There is also a powerful exploration of violence--what it means to witness it and the capacity for it. Mike has a rule about always taking a deer with one shot, and when the film gets into the Vietnam sequences and the infamous Russian roulette scenes, the idea of "one shot" adopts a new meaning. In an interesting dichotomy, after returning home from the war Mike has both an uncomfortable relationship with violence (finding himself unable to take a shot at a deer) and an explosive reaction to encountering it (majorly losing his cool when one friend jokingly points a pistol at another).
The performances are, of course, amazing. I'm enjoying seeing more of De Niro's earlier work, and Walken's performance as Nick is heartbreaking and haunting. Meryl Streep is head-turning in her role as Linda and her presence on screen is undeniable. While the focus is obviously on the main characters, and specifically Mike, the film gives each character a moment--even if it's just a short, quiet sob alone in a kitchen--and it's a compliment to the entire supporting cast that all of the characters feel real and the connections between the larger group feel legitimate. You can feel the shift in the aftermath of the war, and there's a good deal of empathy to go around. Characters like Linda obviously didn't go through what Mike and Nick and Steve experienced, but they have also been impacted and as part of the landscape for the veterans, their pain also matters.
I haven't read anything about this film, and I'll be interested to hear what others have written. I did think that the Vietnamese characters were all of a similar type, but at the same time it reflects the experience of the characters. On the other hand, cruelty and atrocities were not only confined to one side of the conflict. I'm a bit torn on this aspect of the film.
This was a really hard movie to watch. The last two hours are varying degrees of pain and suffering. I sort of regret watching it so late at night and am now trying to use some comfort TV to regain my equilibrium. I'm not sure that I could watch it again anytime soon.
That said, this was an amazing film. I would unhesitatingly recommend it. I found no major flaws with it, aside from being put through the emotional wringer.