The Deer Hunter (1978, USA, Michael Cimino)

Wherein Ben and I deconstruct the legendary Oscar-winning film.

Clearly, my family is waging a rebellion against me - and you! (Monica even read me a poem yesterday to this effect. I must get it to you. It's a delight and it's got the likes of you and me by the tail.) As you know, I have a stack of your films here, but this weekend they refused to let me consult the pile. Since he suffered through Heaven's Gate, Jacob wanted to see this and deserved to too. I hadn't seen it since the year of it's release. If I recall, it was a bit of a big deal that we had all recently turned 18 and could get into the theatre without mom. Anyway, is it not reasonable to reflect on a previous Oscar winner on Oscar night?

I promise not to (try not to) go on at length now, especially with respect to the historical substance of the film. I just want to hit on three major topics. First, the cast and the performances. This holds up big time, very big time, with the exception of John Cazale. I hate having to say this because he is so great in all the other films he is known for. Plus, he died before the film was released, I think. But he never quite shakes the New York Italian thing and I don't buy him in that Pennsylvania steel town. Even Di Niro in his part for the pre-Nam portion of the film is a bit of a stretch, but his acting is just so good, he beats the rap, and everying during and after Nam is not a problem. Everyone else is spot on from word one, including the lesser known players, really giving authenticity to both the class and culture of the town. Streep is a god, really, one of the best screen actors of any generation and either sex. And even though I don't know who was competing against him, Walken deserved his Oscar. A career-defining performance of great depth.

Second, Cimeno at the wheel. Here's where having just recently seen Heaven's Gate, we can identify as nascent the problems which would plague that film. Don't get me wrong, there are some powerful shots and some moments of very effective editing. The cinamatography is especially arresting in the town and up in the mountains, whereas the cutting is at its best at war and in the prison cage. However, in retrospect, I reckon it is only because the film came out when it did and delt with what it does that critics could have overlooked the problems with pacing and narrative. Some scenes just drag on, indicating not so much pretentiousness as filmic inexperience. There is considerable clumsiness in framing crowd shots, editing transitions for maximum dramatic effect, the placement of music and so on. Most of all, there is a lot of dead air when it comes to the dialogue. In the liner notes to the DVD, (remarkable to find them in the case of a renter), it says that one of the reasons Di Nero took the part is because he liked the dialogue for being "real and simple." Fair enough on the "real" Mr. Method Actor but the "simple" is too simple. There is a pronounced failure in TDH to give the characters anything to pronounce. There are scenes silently screaming out for more language. The lack of it is not the result of some mandate for the image either. It's just mediocre writing.

And further to this, the amount of poetic license that must be grated to the climax of the film is truly staggering. That a deranged, Russian Roulette-playing junkie on the other side of the world would send regular "remittence payments" to his war-torn buddy back home doesn't even register on the credibility chart. But wait! This sets in motion the peak of the plot that is truly beyond the pale. That Di Nero might attempt to keep his promise, to do a liberal version of Rambo and refuse to leave his friend over there, OK, I can get behind that. But to actually find the guy - incredible. But wait again! Even if I am willing to allow this for the sake of story telling, to be made to accept that against astronomical odds, Walken has managed to survive only to blow his brains out exactly when De Niro shows up to take him home - this is too much bullshit.

And speaking of bullshit, topic number three: What does it all mean? I promised not to go large and loud in regard to history and I will keep my promise. I just want to say that I at 46 now I am pround of the 18 year old that smelled a rat even then. Of course, the film does not have any respect for the human subjectivity of the Viet Cong and the population supporting it. Barely depicted at all, what is depicted is reduced to metaphoric status, as representative of "the horror of war" in general, on both sides equally, the usual ahistorical and supposedly depoliticized moralism. The liner notes explain that Cimino got the idea for the Russian Roulette metaphor from "the infamous photo of Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong cadre." Yeah, alright. But even if in a Western it is acknowledged that the the Indians did not practice scalping until they learned about it the hard way from the White Man, a Western that shows the Indians doing nothing but scalping white men is still a Western.

But you know, I'm actually not coming down on TDH with this critique now. What I didn't know when I was 18 and what the liner notes (god bless 'em) point out to me now is that the film is just as unacceptable from the perspective of the surviving cowboys. "Even on Oscar night, the film was at the center of a storm: outside the Los Angeles Music Center, police clashed with a group representing the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, who were picketing the film's interpretation of history." TDH is not without meaningful content about the toll the war took on one working class community in America. But the meaning of the film's chief symbols - the Russian Roulette, the hunting of the deer - is ambiguous not in a valid artistic way but in an invalid ideological way. For the Vietnamese people and the American people too.

Don't you just love it when someone hijacks Oscar night for a political protest? If I could count on this happening tonight, I might actually watch the show.

And Dan Responds:

This film figured large for me when it first came out. It was, in fact, one of the very few films I watched more than once in the actual movie theatre. Now, part of the reason for that was I dragged a friend to see it so I'd have someone to talk to about it, and part of the reason for that was that the film troubled me deeply. I was knocked away and repulsed by it in equal measure, and I wanted to work my way through the film, figuring the process might help me come to some sorta peace with it. All these years later, and I am still deeply ambivalent about the whole thing. Cimino's obviously tapped into something emotionally that he hasn't quite got ahold of intellectually, and I think you've touched on some of the reasons for this in your review.

First off, in praise of the film, I love the story's operatic three act structure, particularly the way that Cimino allows the opening act of story to unfold at a leisurely pace, without a lot of editorial intrusion, then shows some real skill, shifting (in a memorable jump cut) from these relatively muted and naturalistic scenes to the Vietnamese action sequences (the content of which is a whole 'nuther kettle of critical fish that I'll come to later) ratcheting the old tension meter up to 11, while the post-Vietnam sequences, in many ways the film's finest, make an unashamed and largely earned grab for the old heartstrings. As this is a tale about a (disintegrating) industrial town, populated by the sorta "old school" folks who'd appreciate such an approach, I think Cimino is wise to present this story as an old-fashioned narrative, telling of these men's journeys from innocence to experience in a pretty conventional style (again, actual content aside).

I'll also whole heartedly back your assertion that Walken deserved his Oscar (for the record he beat out some damned good actors, including John Hurt, Richard Farnsworth, Jack Warden and Bruce Dern, so this was no walkover victory), as his portrayal of a man thoroughly emptied out by the trauma of war is one for the ages. For a fella noted for playing thugs and heavies, Walken plays sensitive remarkably convincingly (for further proof, see his underrated turn in The Dead Zone.) And Streep, surely we can both agree, is the shit. Nobody better, forget which generation, whether boomer, X, Y or Z, she covers the water front. Really, man, just The Best. Ever.

However, looking back on it now, I can't say that I really believe the rest of the guys as blue collar steel workers. Savage overplays it, as only Savage can, and yeah, you're right about the otherwise great Cazale (he was living with Meryl Streep at this time, which must have given her performance some added poignancy knowing how ill he was and all); he's just not a steel working man. Not even deNiro, who is as gritty and no bullshit as they come. You can take Travis off of those filthy NY streets, but that shit sticks. I suppose I shouldn't blame deNiro for this, having created such an iconic figure of post-Vietnam mental disorderliness, but I can't look on his creation here without seeing the shadow of Bickle falling across too many scenes (especially all that "one shot" bullshit.)

Speaking of which, while this one shot, one bullet metaphor makes for riveting drama, it sure casts a pall over the film. The whole Russian roulette analogy just doesn't make much sense, and I don't care if it was inspired by that famous photo, if you can't integrate the image intellectually, it's just a cheap visceral thrill. And it plays right into the hands of those who protest against the film, many of whom were probably--ironically enough--the kind of conservative, old-fashioned folks that live in this kind of town, the kind of folks that I believe Cimino really identifies with and mourns over in this film.