The Deer Hunter (1978)

Written by Deric Washburn

Directed by Michael Cimino

Robert De Niro stars in The Deer Hunter

To cut right to a point, I was firmly prepared to go into this film hating it. It’s a movie about the Vietnam War, set in coal/iron country (so, continuing the dirty grittiness of the 70’s), and, at a running time of three hours, this was going to be a slog to get through. Well, the film isn’t perfect, but I do have to humbly admit that I was more intrigued by this film than I expected that I would be.

My first point, that it’s about the Vietnam War, is actually more incorrect than it is correct. While it takes place in and around the war, the film isn’t really about that. More accurately, the film is about men under pressure, and the war provides a great excuse to twist the pressure to, in some cases, the breaking point. The three lead actors, Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage, all get a nice piece of the pie to chew on, each getting to explore the different ways humanity copes.

Yes, the film is set in a dirty, gritty, ironworks town. I think knowing and preparing for this beforehand actually helped, as I found myself not focusing on it much (or, more likely, this is just a better-crafted film than what’s come before in this decade). The colors are still a little dirty for my taste (as if the print itself is dirty or discolored), but there’s some glimmer of cleanliness emerging.

The runtime of the film is a little long (I’ll pause here to say, again, that I have no problem with long films). There are a few moments where the film seems to drag on a bit unnecessarily, and I think that somewhere within its three hours is a really excellent 2-2.5 hour film.

Meryl Streep in a role that earned her her first of many, MANY Academy Award nominations

The performances here are really excellent, with the obvious standouts of De Niro, Walken, and Meryl Streep, in a role which earned her the first of her record-breaking number of nominations. I’m not incredibly familiar with De Niro’s work, but he’s mesmerizing here, even if some of his actions aren’t fully explained (there were some small plot points that the Wikipedia plot summary helped focus for me afterwards). There’s a great subtext in the film between De Niro and Walken, at least in my analysis. There’s a love between the characters that stretches beyond the merely platonic. It’s not a topic that is explicitly depicted at this point in film history, but to me, Walken is clearly in love with De Niro, and De Niro reciprocates...something. It may not be at the level Walken is, but there’s something there.

A fictional, yet highly dramatic, depiction of Russian Roulette

Ultimately, what is most important for this film is that it is the first on this list to deal with the Vietnam War (it’s been 36 years, by this point, since Mrs. Miniver first dealt with World War II). There’s going to be a lot more coming up, but this film touches on that military campaign with some brutal honesty, depicting some awful acts of war (which, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not sure how much is accurate (my research tells me the repeated Russian Roulette scenes are more invention than not)). I still remain not a fan of war films, but it’s hard to qualify this film as such, because the war is merely the catalyst to explore these damaged characters.

FINAL GRADE: B-