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War is hell. It´s a cliché because, simply put, it´s true. "The Deer Hunter" takes the time to explore the impact that atrocities can have on the psyche of the average man. As a film, "The Deer Hunter" is structured like a group of scenes rather than a cohesive narrative story which results in a great emotional push and complete picture of life in the time of the Vietnam War.
Tracking the stories of Michael (Robert DeNiro) and Nick (Christopher Walken), "The Deer Hunter" explores life in the industrial burg of Clairton, Pennsylvania. Beginning with an Orthodox Russian wedding, the film follows a rollercoaster of emotional peaks and valleys and explores the growth and change of the players on that stage.
DeNiro is the star of the picture, playing the complex and interesting character of Michael. A blue collar steel worker who works to survive and lives for the camaraderie of his friends, Michael seems like a typical American. He´s an everyman, a person that you could see in any bar in any state in the union. He drinks too much, does crazy things and lives for hunting. But all that changes when he goes off to war.
People often judge "The Deer Hunter" as a war movie. It's almost ironic, then, that the sequences set in Vietnam are also some of the shortest during this three hour movie. The iconic Russian Roulette scene in the North Vietnamese camp is actually one of the shortest, yet most powerful, reshaping Michael and Nick into the cast of a jaded veteran, men without hope for the future. Each man then must find his own path to the future.
Nick disappears, going AWOL while Michael returns home and looks to fit into the world he knew in the past. Little has changed save his perceptions. Rather than carouse with his compatriots, Michael is more content in finding the things that make life worth living. Sadly, those things that he expected to bring him peace only exacerbate his situation.
"The Deer Hunter" asks the question, "Can we go home again." Is it possible, after having life-changing experiences, to go back to the familiar and mundane? While the movie posits the question, it is one that can´t be so simply answered. DeNiro´s Michael is able to accept the horrible things he saw and was forced to do and make those changes in the way he views the world. Walken´s Nick, on the other hand, was not able to adapt. He runs away from the world that he knew before. Neither character can go back to the previous status quo; the rub lies in their ability to adapt to the world, something many veterans returning from the war in Vietnam were unable to do.
DeNiro and Walken both earn the accolades tossed their way by the Academy, and the film has earned its credit as one of the most powerful of all time. Nobody in this movie is perfect. Michael lusts after the woman who belongs to his friend, while Nick cracks under the strains of war. Each person in Clairton has their own foibles... which in turn makes them far more recognizable and empathetic to the viewer.
The film is not a traditional climactic narrative story, rather it is a portrait of a time and the people who existed lived through it. It is not the story of war, rather its impacts on those who experience it.
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[release]16323[/release]