The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter was the first Vietnam War movie to win Best Picture. In 1978 there were two movies about the struggles of Vietnam Vets after they came home from the war. The other movie was Coming Home with Jon Voight and Jane Fonda. I have never seen that one so I cant really compare the two.  The Deer Hunter is a 3 hour long movie pretty much composed of 3 parts pre-war, during the war, and after the war of approximately an hour each.  I have been busy and it was difficult to find time to watch the whole movie as a whole so I kind of watched each part separately.  This might have been a mistake because the movie seemed long and drawn out. I wonder if I had watched it all the way through if I would have found it more engrossing. This is a movie that seems like I should have loved.  It is dark, gritty and violent but for some reason it didn’t work as a whole.  Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep all give great performances but there are parts that just don’t work. 

The movie is about 3 Pennsylvania steel workers who enlist in the Army and go over and fight in the Vietnam War.  Before they leave they are excited and ready for action. Steve (John Savage) gets married and they have a huge celebration. The others go off on one final hunting trip.  The leader of the group is Michael played by Robert De Niro.  Christopher Walken plays his pal Nick and Meryl Streep plays Nick’s girlfriend Linda.  Michael, Nick, and Steve head off to war and witness some horrific things. After being captured they are placed in a P.O.W. camp and forced to play Russian roulette.  Michael comes up with a plan for the three of them to escape but to do so he has to play Russian roulette against Nick.  After some intense rounds they manage to overtake their captors and escape. When they are finally rescued they end up being separated and lose track of each other.  When Michael makes it home he finds out that Steven survived and was already home but was staying in a VA hospital because he lost both of his legs, and he has only talked to his wife once since he has been back.  Michael also finds out that Nick went AWOL and no one has heard from him.  Michael and Linda end up comforting each other and begin a romance, but Michael heads back to Vietnam to find Nick.  He finds out that Nick has suffered so much mental stress from all that happened that he has started playing Russian roulette for money.  Michael finds him and tries to talk him into coming home.  Nick is so lost in his own world that he barely recognizes Michael and can’t be persuaded to leave.

While the scenes in Vietnam are intense especially the Russian roulette scenes the ones in Pennsylvania are kind of boring.  I also would have liked to see more of Christopher Walken’s character decent into madness.  He is so great especially at the end when he is completely crazy. This role earned him his only Academy Award.  Robert De Niro gives an excellent performance but when doesn’t he give excellent performances (this was his third of six Oscar Nominations).  While Michael never really goes off his rocker we see him struggle with all that has gone on.  Meryl Streep in one of her first major roles gives a moving performance as Linda who stands by her boyfriend and is devastated when he never returns. Streep earned her first Oscar nomination for the role.  She has since gone on to earn 15 more nomination and 2 wins making her the most nominated actor or actress in Oscar history.  With all this great acting and some really disturbing scenes I still feel the movie doesn’t work as a whole. Like I said I am not sure that’s because I did not watch it all at once but I plan on watching it again straight through as soon as I get a chance to see if it changes my mind.
Update:  After watching the whole thing through from start to finish I realized that there are long parts of the movie that kind of boring and dont really add any plot points or character details.  The stricking images especially in Vietnam are very effective but the long drawn out scenes really take away from the movie. Also the music is very boring especially during the hunting scenes. 

Coming Home was the other big winner in 1978. Losing Best Picture but winning Best Actor for Jon Voight and Best Actress for Jane Fonda. It also won Best Original Screenplay.  It was one of the rare movies that were nominated in all 4 of the acting categories. Besides for Voight and Fonda, Bruce Dern was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Milford was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  Also nominated for Best Actor was Laurence Olivier for The Boys from Brazil. This was his tenth and last nomination. He did get the Lifetime Achievement award that year for his many great performances.

1978 seems to have not been a great year for movies. There were not many good movies that year.  The biggest movie of the year was Grease which got only one nomination for the song “Hopelessly Devoted to You” but not for any of the other Bee Gee’s songs in the movie.  Making it the second year in a row the Bee Gee’s got snubbed.  Other popular movies that year included Animal House, Halloween, and Superman. Superman earned John Williams another nomination for Score. Also 1978 was the year Gary Busy got nominated for playing Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story.

An interesting note about John Cazale who played Stan in the movie. John starred in only 5 movies in his career before dying of bone cancer.  He played Fredo in the Godfather and The Godfather Part II, he was also in The Conversation and Dog Day Afternoon.  He was very sick on the set of The Deer Hunter and died shortly afterward at the age of 42. All 5 movies he was in were nominated for Best Picture and 3 of them won. Making him the only person to have every movie he was in to get nominated for Best Picture.  Also, he was engaged to Meryl Streep before he died.  There was a great documentary short that I saw at Sundance about him called I Knew it was You: Rediscovering John Cazale worth checking out if you find if playing on HBO. 

By the Numbers:

The Deer Hunter was listed as number 79 on AFI 100 Greatest Movies in 1997 and 53 in 2007
The Deer Hunter is currently at #132 on IMDB Top 250.