The Deer Hunter [HD DVD] Review
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I watched Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter again recently, some thirty years after I first saw it. It remains a remarkable film, a piece of powerful story-telling, a coming-together of fine actors and fine acting, engrossing scene-setting, careful character-building, and deep meaning. I was struck most forcefully on this second viewing by two things: the film's foreshadowing of American decline, and its testament to the power of myth.
The America of The Deerhunter, the massive industry, the doughty immigrants, the omnipresence of Detroit, the mysticism of guns and hunting, the wealth that made the war, and the way it was waged, possible--all that is gone now, or going. Did Cimino see that it was being destroyed, that Viet Nam was destroying it, or is it just very easy to see now that that was when the darkness began to take hold?
In the final scene of the film, the main characters are gathered for breakfast after the funeral of the friend who destroyed himself in Southeast Asia. One man is legless and broken, another alienated forever from his civilian friends by the knowledge of what the war really was. Their women are emotionally shattered. The men who stayed at home are well-meaning but lost. The gathering is awkward, grief-laden, every participant burdened with the incomprehensible. What has happened is not what should have happened, not what anyone ever dreamed could happen, not what anyone knows how to live with. And what do they do? They begin hesitantly, spontaneously to sing together, God Bless America. What else can they do? They have no other story to live by.
It is an extraordinarily touching, delicate moment, vibrant with human truth, a grand anti-climax to a story of heroism, community, patriotism, friendship, and madness, of failed faith. This is a film by a man who understands our country, believes in it, but has the courage and the gentleness to relieve of us our illusions about it, if we will allow him to. We need this film now, as we needed it when it was made, when we could not fully understand what it was telling us.
The Deer Hunter [HD DVD] Feature
The Deer Hunter [HD DVD] Overview
Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama. --Jeff Shannon
The Deer Hunter [HD DVD] Specifications
Winner of 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino) and Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), this critically acclaimed, extraordinarily powerful film tracks a group of steelworker pals from a Pennsylvania blast furnace to the cool hunting grounds of the Alleghenies to the lethal cauldron of Vietnam. Robert De Niro gives an outstanding performance as Michael, the natural leader of the group. The Deer Hunter is a searing drama of friendship and courage - and what happens to these qualities under hardship. It is a shattering emotional experience you will never forget.
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Deniro lives up to Taxi Driver here and then some - Ghost - Northern California
Now here is truly a drama as good as, if not better than Platoon. Especially in light of this dark era we find ourselves living in, where it seems that military and prison are the only two industries thriving right now, this may be the best movie ever made. What a sick, demonic world that we are living in today, if you don't mind my saying so, or if it's even still legal for me to say it. The film shows the effect traumatic situations can travel into within a mind control framework, where after the satanic ceremonial 'cleansing' of war, Walken rejects Heaven and prefers Hell because it is all that is familiar to him now. At least that's my take on it. It's interesting to me how those living a Hell on earth may very well find themselves in a Heaven within the cosmos later. The power of friendship and the power of trauma are the two central themes here in this beautiful movie which shows the essence of both better than any other that I can recall. Also, Cavatina is a great song that perfectly matches the tone in the overall movie. It starts off slow but it is well worth it to watch to the bitterweet end.
Classic - GForcum - Ceres, CA
A classic with many stars. Paints a picture of survival after the war and is a real eye opener.
Clipping my toenails was more entertaining! - Philip Michaels -
Oh my, where do we start! One long and tedious film. Who wrote the script? It seems to me all actors were just ad-libbing their lines. Don't even ask me how it
won best picture. Was 1978 that bad of a year for movies? This film is only for die hards of De Niro or strange war films.
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