I can identify a lot with The Deer Hunter because my mother's family were of Ukranian background and my relatives on her side were a whole lot like the people we see here from Clairton, Pennsylvania. They worked in the same factory jobs that these men do and answered the call of their country at war, but in a whole different time. And the grandson of one my uncles recently served in Iraq as a marine.
Make no mistake about it, these people for all their personal faults are the backbone of America. They are the folks whose blood gets spilled in the wars we fight. So when they are called it had better not be in an unrighteous or fruitless cause.
Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage are three mill workers from small town Clairton, Pennsylvania. All from Slavic background as my family is and in a time when those of us more educated and more sophisticated and knowing better dodge the draft, these guys enlist and go to Vietnam. The Deer Hunter is about the effects of that war on all of them and all around them.
John Savage gets overlooked a lot with both Robert DeNiro being nominated for Best Actor and Christopher Walken winning for Best Supporting Actor, but Savage is the guy most physically damaged, losing a leg as a result of the escape all three make from a Viet Cong prison. He's growing quite accustomed to what he calls the country club of the VA hospital he's in and can't bring himself to come home.
Robert DeNiro is a hunter on weekends, as were some in my family. But the sure marksman from before Vietnam, after having to kill people to stay alive, is not about killing defenseless deer any longer. Meryl Streep plays the woman who loves both DeNiro and Walken and she's so totally immersed in her role and her role's ethnic background, I could swear she was one of my relatives.
Christopher Walken will blow you away with his performance of the man totally unhinged by his capture with the Viet Cong and the Russian Roulette games they play with the captives. His final confrontation with DeNiro will move you beyond words.
Michael Cimino who directed and co-wrote the screenplay got an Oscar for the film and himself and deserved every bit of it. Acclaimed the new genius of the cinema, his next project proved to be an overblown disaster, Heaven's Gate. Not that that film was as bad as it was made out to be, but Cimino's career plummeted and never really got back on track.
28 years later I remember the Oscar ceremonies in 1979 when a dying John Wayne presented the Best Picture Oscar for The Deer Hunter. Ironic also because one of the cast member, John Cazale who played one of the friends in Clairton and best remembered for being Freddo Corleone in The Godfather also was dying of cancer while the film was being shot.
Although I find it a bit too coincidental that three men from the same small town who join the Army would have the exact same service record, The Deer Hunter isn't really about the Vietnam War. It's about war and what it can do those that serve and to those around them.
And this review is dedicated to those that serve.
