I love Vietnam movies. The problem that 99.99% of them are terrible still remains though. Almost every movie that focuses on the Vietnam war portrays the soldiers as pot-smoking murderess in a war that is nothing but a lie and a wrong doing to all. "The Deer Hunter" takes a far different approach though, and it focuses strictly on the men, and the small town they live in. In fact, only about 40 minutes of this three hour film take place in Vietnam.
The first hour of the movie takes place in a small mining town somewhere in America. It centers on a group of seven men and two best friends (Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken) as they are about to celebrate their friends wedding before their departure to the war. After the laughs and song and dance with this homely group of people though, the movie jump cuts to the war. The war effects them in a way nothing has effected them before. Many of their minds are tormented (as is yours) during the grueling war that contain some of the most intense scenes I've ever seen in a movie. While watching a scene that involves one character who has practically lost his mind, I looked at the movie in retrospect. Many Vietnam movies show soldiers as crazy lunatics, blatantly and without reason. In this movie though, the transformation from man to mindless was completely believable after the horrors of the war, and you felt the pain of their families.
This is easily the best war movie I have ever seen, but it's almost hard to say it's a war movie as there is little to no scenes involving the war directly. In fact, if you had no idea that this was a war movie, you would be completely caught off guard when the war scenes finally start. If you can get past the running time and look past what the movie may say, or not say, about the war and simply look at the group of men involved and how they are affected by it I strongly recommend this movie.
(side note: the movie ends with a group of people singing "God Bless America" and they are completely honest in what they sing.)
3 comments:
You made the point that most Vietnam movies portray the characters as going out of their minds for no apparent reason...their insanity is just vaguely connected to the war. But isn't it much more dangerous when a movie (like "The Deer Hunter") blames the war by connecting the insanity directly to the brutality of conflict. I'm not saying it's not accurate, but Vietname movies are fond of portraying a conflict that made men go insane because of the horrors they witnessed. The implication is that innocence was lost and men were broken in a war that never should have been. It sounds like "The Deer Hunter" does the same.
I think that might be a little too picky. It's an astounding movie. If the war never happened and this movie made it up it wouldn't change anything, it's really really good. The movie doesn't talk much about the war at all, and it's really about the characters. I didn't think about how wrong or right the war was while watching the movie, I just wanted the men to survive.
also, I probably emphasised too much on characters going insane, and while that plays a part in the movie, it isn't the foundation of the film.
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