Reviews by:
@tvnerdaran
RATE THIS MOVIE
6
5
4
3
Michael Cimino’s ‘The Deer Hunter’ is one of my favourite films of all time. It is a stunningly acted, sensitively directed, beautifully shot and emotionally shattering film on the horrors of the Vietnam War, and how the war shattered an entire working-class community in the process. In this essay, I will explore the film’s exploration of war, horror, friendship, melancholy and the nature of life.
‘The Deer Hunter’ centres around a small working-class community in a Pennsylvania steel town, with the main characters Michael 'Mike' Vronsky (played by Robert De Niro) and Nikanor 'Nick' Chevotarevich (played in an Oscar-winning performance by Christopher Walken) enlisting to fight in the Vietnam War alongside fellow friend Steven Pushkov (played by John Savage), as Michael and Nick leave behind the woman they both secretly love, Linda (played by Meryl Streep in her breakout performance). However, the three friends are soon captured and tortured by the Vietcong where they are forced to play Russian roulette by their captors, before killing their captors and escaping. But the scars, whether they be physical, mental or psychological change the lives of the three friends and the entire community they live in forever.
Firstly, the film has some of the greatest acting that I have ever seen committed to celluloid. Robert De Niro gives one of his finest performances as the loyal and intelligent Michael, a man who has the mindset of a group leader and always thinks of his friends and his community. Christopher Walken gives arguably the greatest performance of his entire career as Nick, with his gut-wrenching portrayal of a man who is psychologically destroyed by the horrors of war serving as the film‘s most tragic and sympathetic character. Meryl Streep shines in her breakthrough performance as Linda, the woman who both Mike and Nick love who gives the film its emotional core. Followed by a strong supporting cast of actors including John Savage and John Cazale, who tragically passed away from cancer shortly after the film finished filming. It is by far one of the best acted films I’ve ever seen from the entire cast all around.
The film also has beautiful cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond, who lends a sense of voyeuristic beauty to the film’s natural landscapes, and the film’s main theme “Cavatina” by Stanley Myers and Australian guitarist John Williams remaining to this day one of the most beautiful and tragic pieces of music that I have ever heard. But apart from the film’s technical aspects, it is also a masterpiece of storytelling. Though many viewers complain of the film’s first act and the nearly hour-long wedding sequence, it only serves to further enhance the characters and gets us the viewer to know and care about them and the struggles they face from my point of view. By spending so much time at home and with the characters, we as the audience warm to them and end up caring that much more about the struggles that they will face later on.
The film’s brutal and infamous Vietnam scenes, where the Vietcong force Michael, Nick and Steve to play Russian roulette remains among the most intense and powerful scenes in cinema history. The scene is long, brutal and thoroughly intense, as each second feels like a ticking time bomb, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seats before the three friends manage to successfully escape. These scenes, as famous and iconic as they are, also managed to court their fair share of controversy, as there is no evidence whatsoever that the Vietcong forced their prisoners to play Russian roulette. However, director Michael Cimino has addressed this, and made it clear multiple times, that he never set out to make a definitive statement on the Vietnam War and who were the real victims or aggressors. He simply states that he set out to make a contemplative and personal film on the devastating effects that the horrors of war have on an entire local community.
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert famously defended the film’s use of artistic license, stating: “The game of Russian roulette becomes the organizing symbol of the film: Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous.” Ebert‘s allegory of the film’s use of Russian roulette applies to Cimino’s own views on the Vietnam War: an essentially horrific and pointless conflict full of random, unnecessary violence that caused only death and suffering to all of those involved.
The Russian roulette scenes also serve the purpose of changing the characters and their attitudes towards life. Michael previously hunted deers for sport, and had no problems shooting any of them. However, after the war and his own harrowing experiences, he learns to appreciate the value of all life, human or animal, and can no longer bring himself to harm any more deers. This fundamental change in Michael’s character also applies to Nick, who initially was the film’s most cheerful and optimistic character, but emerged the coldest and most damaged of them all by his experiences, staying behind to play Russian roulette over and over again repeatedly in Saigon. Steve is also crippled physically as he is emotionally by his experiences, showing the both literally and figuratively crippling effects that war has on its survivors.
The film also highlights the nature of life itself, with most of the film’s runtime depicting the characters’ daily lives and their interactions with others at home in Pennsylvania. This serves to ground the film in realism, as these characters feel like us, constantly trying to get by and pass through our daily lives and interactions with others, only serving to make the characters that much more relatable. Michael Cimino, in my opinion, is an absolute master of realism, depicting the daily aimless lives of his characters throughout his films, making them seem more and more like real people as a result. Cimino truly knows how to make cinema echo life itself in both this film and his other masterpiece, ‘Heaven’s Gate’.
The film eventually reaches its emotional climax when Michael courageously returns to Vietnam in search of his long lost friend Nick, only to discover his friend as an empty, emotionally crippled husk of his former self who is driven purely by drugs and the deadly games he plays. The scene where Michael briefly gets Nick to remember his old life, before Nick ends up dying by his own hand when he pulls the trigger during his final game of Russian roulette with Mike. The scene remains among the most devastating and brilliantly acted scenes in cinema history, before the film eventually ends with the fall of Saigon and Nick’s untimely burial.
Overall, ‘The Deer Hunter’ is an absolute masterclass in emotional filmmaking and cinematic realism, making each and every one of its characters fully fleshed out and feeling like real people, all while showing some of the most devastating scenes of war and its aftermath ever committed to film. I will finish this review with Roger Ebert’s famous quote emphasising the power of the film.
“Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" is a three-hour movie in three major movements. It is a progression from a wedding to a funeral. It is the story of a group of friends. It is the record of how the war in Vietnam entered several lives and altered them terribly forever. It is not an anti-war film. It is not a pro-war film. It is one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made.” - Roger Ebert.
By @tvnerdaran
RATE THIS REVIEW
6
5
4
3
Commenti