Best Picture #: 51
Original Release Date: December 8, 1978
Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours, 3 minutes
Director: Michael Cimino
Quick Impressions:
For the sake of completion, we did watch Annie Hall, and I wrote up my thoughts. But Woody Allen is getting enough press right now. The thought of posting something about him at this time emotionally exhausts me. I don’t have unique insights about Allen or Dylan Farrow. Writing about Allen’s work (which is good) without addressing the allegations against him might imply a tacit willingness to overlook child rape in service of genius. Hurting a child is always wrong. But what can I say? I have no exclusive facts, and my uninformed opinion is not relevant.
So yeah, I’m not going to post anything about Annie Hall right now.
I’ll just skip to The Deer Hunter. As I never discovered until researching the film’s original reception as I watched, The Deer Hunter has been plagued by controversies of its own.
This is the film that won Best Picture at the Oscar ceremony that took place in 1979, the year when I was finally born. (I feel like I’ve been playing catch up ever since.) All my life, I’ve known just two things about this movie. 1) Like fellow nominee Coming Home, it’s about returning from Vietnam and struggling to readjust to ordinary life, and 2) Meryl Streep got her first Oscar nomination for her work here, which must have been emotional for her because she was in a relationship with co-star John Cazale at the time, and he was battling cancer during the whole shoot and died just after completing his part. For most of my life, I viewed all of this as an enlightening footnote, revealing intensely private tragedy in the otherwise seemingly triumphant life of Meryl Streep.
The Deer Hunter wasn’t a film I watched as a child. Nobody in my family even talked about it, not even my Godfather-loving grandma, normally an outspoken fan of Robert De Niro. (Before watching, I didn’t know Robert De Niro was in this movie! I’d heard Christopher Walken had a rare dramatic part, but I had no idea that his character, Nick, played such a significant role in the story.)
Given the general ignorance I’ve just confessed, you’ll probably be less than surprised to hear that I also had no awareness of the controversy this film generated upon its release. At that time, some people protested that the film made the Viet Cong look too cruel, that the movie was almost racist in its lazy invention of their specific cruelties. When you watch The Deer Hunter, you’ll notice its focus on Russian Roulette. You watch and get the sense that in Vietnam, all prisoners of war are forced to play Russian Roulette by sadistic North Vietnamese captors who take a perverse glee in dishing out the psychological torture. But was this actually a thing? The screenwriter admitted to getting material from televised news reports rather than firsthand sources. When I recently discussed this with some new friends, one confessed that he’d always had the impression that being forced to play Russian Roulette as a POW was a crucial part of the whole Vietnam experience. Believe it or not, I always thought so, too! I remember kids playing pretend war games that involved that particular flourish back in the 1980s.
As I watched The Deer Hunter, I thought, “This doesn’t seem intentionally racist. It doesn’t insist that Russian Roulette was the activity of choice in every POW camp, just this one. And the Russian Roulette enthusiasts we see later in the film are of varied races.” (There is a lot of Othering going on, though. I’ll get to that later.) If Russian Roulette was not often played in Vietnamese POW camps, however, and this movie simply invented that, and it became so pervasive that people (like me and someone else I talked to) believed it as children, then that is problematic. I need to do more research about this issue, but I thought it was prudent to address it right up front.
The Plot:
Michael, Nick, and Steven live in a small steel town in Pennsylvania where they all attend the Russian Orthodox church, drink together at the bar, and go deer hunting in the nearby mountains when they need to get away. After these three friends (along with the rest of the town) attend Steven’s (very long) wedding, they’re shipped off to fight in Vietnam. As prisoners of war, they’re forced into a game of Russian Roulette that causes permanent trauma and alters the shape of the rest of their lives, even after they come home.
The Good:
If, like me, you enjoy trying to puzzle out people’s motivations and interpersonal relationships, then this movie provides plenty of delicious fodder. Even before going off to Vietnam endlessly complicates everything, these characters have plenty going on already. The movie opens with a slice of life, a niche community getting ready to celebrate a wedding, grounded in realism and verisimilitude. (I say “niche” because these aren’t just any Americans. They’re residents of a Russian, Eastern Orthodox community in Pennsylvania who all work in the same factory, attend the same church, and hunt in the same mountains. We get a vivid, detailed, dynamic snapshot of this community.)
The wedding portion of the movie is so long that it just kind of washes over us. If we’re interested, we can quickly get sucked into the riddle of the relationships. (Why does De Niro keep staring at Streep? Who is the father of Angela’s baby? What makes the dynamic between Michael and Nick so special? Why is Stevie marrying Angela?) There’s a lot to unpack here, especially because some of the characters seem confused by (or don’t have the maturity to be curious about) their own motivations. And the longer we spend at the wedding, the more we feel absorbed by this rich, complex microcosm.
And then there’s kind of a bait-and-switch, pull-out-the-tablecloth move, not unlike the ending of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Just when we get settled into the world of this story, everything changes, and none of this carefully woven first act drama matters anymore. I know a lot of people consider the wedding scene (if you can call it that; maybe wedding portion is more accurate) boring. And it does drag on. But I think it’s useful for what the movie is ultimately trying to achieve. After soaking in the atmosphere and interpersonal relationships of that extremely specific town/group/event, we (the audience) also feel disoriented by the disruption of Vietnam. We don’t just watch the characters’ lives get upended by what happens to them. We feel we’ve been upended along with them. For me, this technique works. (It will not work, however, if the opening sequence about the town bores you so much that you disengage with the movie, which is a big risk the film takes.)
Visually, the movie makes some fascinating choices. It deals in rich, distinct settings of vivid specificity. Though The Deer Hunter is three hours long, it takes us to only a handful of places. First we see the small industrial town in Pennsylvania. It’s not just any generic spot. As the film opens, we’re treated to such a thorough, sensory dive into the blast furnace of a steel factory that my daughter and I were gripped with terror and awe. Then we see the rest of the town, where life centers on either the Russian Orthodox Church that serves what feels like the entire community, or the local tavern that serves plenty of cold beer. The film immerses us in this (rather distinctive) town for such a long time that we feel like we live there. Then it shows us someplace Other. Middle Earth.
Actually, the first place we see is Washtington state. It’s supposed to be Western Pennsylvania, but as a new friend of mine confirmed in a recent conversation, the immense mountains we see when the men go hunting look nothing at all like the landscape near Pennsylvania. (As we watched, my daughter and I had our distinct suspicions, but neither of us has actually been to Pennsylvania.) It looks like New Zealand. I kept joking that I was expecting Gandalf, and my daughter noted that it looked like a 1980s fantasy movie to her. The stark difference between this space (which cannot possibly exist where it is) and the intensely real town helps us to understand the purpose of these deer hunting trips. (Obviously we were paying close attention to them anyway, since the movie is called The Deer Hunter.) The town feels real (very, very specific, a colorful niche community, but real). The mountains where the men escape together to participate in the head-clearing refuge of hunting—those are more like a dream space. The area is so Other from the real town that the actions performed there seem to have a deep, symbolic psychological significance.
Then very abruptly (like the ol’ table-cloth trick, as I’ve mentioned), we’re with the men in Vietnam in the throes of war. (We don’t see them go. We don’t see them arrive. We just blink, and they’re there.) And the intense Otherness of the new location lets us know that we’re in a kind of dream space (removed from mundane real life) once again. Only this time, we’ve stumbled on the setting of nightmares. (Not surprisingly, most of the Vietnam material is filmed in Thailand. To me, 1978 seems so close in time to the real events of the Vietnam War. I would think filming in Vietnam would have been pretty difficult, but I don’t know the reason Thailand was chosen for sure.)
But as we watch, we see that the town is real, the mountains are Dream, and the war is Nightmare. (Somewhat provocatively, both Dream and Nightmare are more aesthetically pleasing spaces than the characters’ ordinary world.) I appreciated the elegant simplicity of this set up. Maybe the film’s symbolism is less than subtle. (Certainly, it can’t be a coincidence that De Niro’s character feels a deer must be killed with one bullet!) But this is the kind of movie that lets long scenes wash over us and invites us to lose ourselves in them. (Actually, Around the World in 80 Days often seemed to be going for something similar, an almost hypnotic effect on the audience, but The Deer Hunter doesn’t push the technique quite as far.)
With gorgeous cinematography that helps us to understand the film on some level without thinking about it intellectually, and central concerns so relevant to its own day, The Deer Hunter seems like a natural fit for Best Picture. It also has a stellar cast—Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, John Savage—who give just the kind of performances you would expect from them. (They’re joined by Chuck Aspegren who wasn’t even an actor when he was cast for his authentic vibe.)
I spent most of the movie obsessively watching Meryl Streep. (It’s so exciting to see her first nominated performance! I can’t believe we’ve never made a point of watching this film before. She’s my husband’s favorite actress. When we were dating, we watched A Prairie Home Companion and The Devil Wears Prada not long apart. “That was the same actress???!” he marveled. “She’s incredible! She’s so versatile!” This is one of the things that drew me to my husband, his innate, unstudied good taste coupled with unquestioning openness and a complete lack of pretentiousness.)
You will not be surprised to hear that Streep is great and makes her part much more interesting than it has any right to be. De Niro makes the somewhat complicated protagonist more sympathetic than he might otherwise seem. (Michael is a complicated guy, but at this point, audiences are already conditioned to like Robert De Niro.) The most surprising and captivating performance belongs to Christopher Walken as Nick. I can think of few actors who can be funnier than Walken while making such humorous timing seem innate and effortless. (In fact, he’s screamingly funny in his tiny part in Annie Hall the year before.) But I’ve never seen his talents as a dramatic actor on full display before. He did win Best Supporting Actor for this performance.
Best Scene:
The first Russian Roulette scene in the POW compound is by far the film’s most suspenseful and gripping. If your viewing experience is like mine, the early part of the movie will just kind of wash over you, and then, suddenly, Wham! (Maybe I should say, Bang!) We’re just dropped down right into the middle of things, and we get a scene as tense and focused as the wedding was relaxed and sprawling. (One strength of this film is the way it shows how trauma can alter perception of the passage of time.)
Best Scene Visually:
Every scene in the film looks great. The steel factory in the opening makes quite an impression. (One thing that’s kind of odd is that “Vietnam” (really Thailand) looks so much more inviting and captivating that the place that is supposed to be the comforting home of these characters. I’m not sure what to make of that.) Nick’s final scene with Steven provides an arresting image (though I do feel it’s a bit manipulative).
Probably the best scene visually comes when Michael attempts to go deer hunting after returning home from the war but just can’t seem to catch his prey.
Best Action Sequence:
If you want action, look no further than Michael’s frustrated outburst at the end of his first hunting trip after he’s back home. (I mean the part with the gun.) This is so disturbing. We remain on Michael’s side, but we also see that he’s playing a completely new game now, and no one knows the rules (not even him).
The Negatives:
So much of what makes this film gripping, engaging, and moving is driven by the supposition that American POWs captured by the Viet Cong were forced to play Russian Roulette as a form of psychological torture. If (as I’ve read on the internet), this wasn’t even a thing, then the film (at best) is manipulating the audience and (at worst) has some serious ethical issues to answer for. (It’s worse because there’s such a prevalent, wide-spread association in people’s minds between Vietnam and Russian Roulette. If this, in fact, has never been supported by real events, then the movie isn’t just inauthentic, but it has actively spread misinformation that’s worked its way into accepted pop culture. That’s kind of problematic, right?
I don’t agree that the movie is intentionally racist with all its Russian Roulette playing. At least, it’s not being racist specifically against the Vietnamese people since later we see that the high stakes game is all the rage among Chinese high rollers and one eccentric, vaguely creepy French guy. (But then I’ll admit that it does make the demand for professional Russian Roulette players generated by the Exotic Other. It’s the same kind of energy that was going on with all the aggressive Orientalizing in the 300. No matter the specific ethnic makeup of the other group, there is an Other. You come away with the idea that Americans hunt deer, while the Others hunt people. The professionals seem to enjoy the cruelty of the sport and the potential for big bucks to be made. They’re motivated by sadism, greed, and (especially in the case of that one dude) ennui. Americans are only involved in such things if they’re the ones being exploited.) I’ll admit that this is a negative message to be putting out there, especially if it’s not based in any kind of fact. (I will add the disclaimer, though, that I haven’t researched the subject with true academic diligence. I’ve just googled around the internet and seen some things that surprised me.)
The other problem with The Deer Hunter is the slow pace at which the story progresses. At least the first hour is a big Orthodox wedding. Nothing that happens here seems terribly significant. We do get some insight into character dynamics of the group. (And there’s a lot going on. Nick probably impregnated Angela, but he’s in love with Meryl Streep at whom his best friend Michael can’t stop staring from distant doorways. Steven knows he’s not the father of Angela’s baby, but he insists on marrying her anyway. Michael values Nick more than anyone else, prefers his company, and won’t even let the wrong person borrow his boots.) This kind of thing fascinates me, but it’s probably going to lose some people who just don’t want to spend an hour wondering why Michael won’t stop staring at Linda, or why he decides to strip naked and run down the street yelling in the middle of the night after the wedding. (Parents beware. There is full-frontal male nudity in this. It’s brief, but De Niro’s making a big noisy spectacle of himself at the time, so watch with caution.)
I also wanted more resolution for Linda. And I wanted to know more about Angela. All she really does is cause trouble by being pregnant and getting married. We don’t get much insight into her character, her thoughts, her motivations. In general, the film has little emphasis on its female characters. Now, in part, this is because it’s about the Vietnam War. But it does take them over an hour to get to Vietnam. For the longest time, everybody is just hanging around at a wedding, and all of these issues involving female characters keep being raised and not satisfactorily explored.
And then–maybe I just come from a sheltered world–but some elements of Nick’s story seem so improbable (especially the almost bizarre duration of his success in his new chosen career). It’s captivating, but you constantly wonder, “Am I being had?”
Overall:
I enjoyed watching The Deer Hunter. If you have the patience to submit to its hypnotic, slow-building first act, then the film does eventually offer tremendous emotional payoff. I do wonder about its cavalier willingness to suggest (perhaps baselessly) that Russian Roulette was all the rage in Vietnamese prison camps. But I did especially enjoy watching Meryl Streep in her first Oscar nominated performance.