Five Oscarsincluding the best film and the best director, and the only one in his career Oscar for Christopher Walken for a supporting role. Returning to the cinema “The Deer Hunter” is a legendary film today and in principle its greatness is not questioned. At the time of its premiere in 1978, it was different.
“The Deer Hunter” it hit theaters the same year as the one produced by Jane Fonda “Homecoming” by Hal Ashbie. They were the first two Hollywood films to touch on the topic of the Vietnam War, which broke America’s spine. In a social and political sense. Cimino’s film won the Oscar fight, although it was the main one Jane Fonda and John Voight took home acting awards.
For Fonda, who plays a nurse caring for a war veteran, it was an important project, if only because of the criticism she received after her shameful photos with Vitcong soldiers, close to the so-called Hanoi Hilton, where American soldiers were tortured. “The Way Home” was a kind of redemption for the artist, who is still referred to as “Hanoi Jane” in war veteran circles. Her the film is an anti-war manifesto, but also a moving tribute to veterans. Quick “The Deer Hunter” was ideologically opposed to it. Wrong.
Michael Cimino tells the story of three friends living in a Russian-speaking immigrant community in the working-class town of Clairton, Pennsylvania. Mickey (Robert De Niro), Nickname (Christopher Walker) and Steven (John Savage) are best friends and workers at the local ironworks. They all get drafted, which is the equivalent of being sent to Vietnam. Each of them believes in the sense of fighting in a distant country. Even if they don’t even know its exact location. Before they cross the gates of war hell, they celebrate Steven’s wedding, which, instead of being an opening on a new path in life, becomes a burial of the innocence of all three.
Masterfully filmed by Vilmos Zsigmond there’s a party, next to the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.”the most famous wedding in the history of the 10th Muse. The framework of the story about three friends who are devastated (physically and mentally) by Vietnam to varying degrees is a deer hunt. It ultimately symbolizes the existential transformation of each of the characters for whom the war will never end. Despite hanging up the uniform.
Cimino’s film was boycotted by the communist bloc countries behind the scenes of Russian roulette, which Vietcong soldiers brutally force American prisoners to play. Not only the communists were outraged. In the USA, there were voices that these scenes were a racist and stereotypical look at the Vietnamese.
Also the final melancholy shot with the humming of an American patriotic song “God Bless America” was sometimes perceived as support for the American intervention in Vietnam. This is complete nonsense. For Cimino, this song has a funeral dimension and announces the death of a part of the soul not only of the heroes, but also of America itself.
“The Deer Hunter” is undoubtedly an anti-communist film, but its message is also universally anti-war. In a different way than Jane Fonda in “The Way Home”, which was inspired by the veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic, about whom Oliver Stone in turn wrote “Born on July 4th”. Cimino made a film not only about the fate of war veterans unable to return from hell, but also showed how war affects the entire community.
“The Deer Hunter” is a film by Walken and De Niro. Their two scenes at Russian roulette are the ultimate masterpiece of acting. However, we cannot forget about subtle creation Meryl Streep in the role of a woman caught between feelings for both friends. In hindsight, the creation is also shocking John Cazalewho played while seriously ill with cancer. Known for his role as Fredo in “The Godfather” the outstanding actor died before the premiere of “The Deer Hunter”.
Today’s show “The Deer Hunters” has a different dimension than in 1978, or even when we first watched the film in Poland on TV and VHS cassettes in the 1990s. Today, war cinema is heavily focused on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the premieres of “The Deer Hunter” and “The Homecoming” took place not only before Oliver Stone’s Vietnamese trilogy (“Pluto”, “Born on the Fourth of July”, “Between Heaven and Earth”), but also before “Apocalypse Now” (1979) by Francis Ford Coppola, which created in cinema a paranoid image of the Vietnam War and an ironic “Full Metal Jacket” (1987) Stanley Kubrick.
“The Deer Hunter” focuses on the drama of soldiers and their families, but also… shows what war does to every community and how the Vietnamese one influenced the United States of America itself. Vietnam was the first war the Americans lost. A defeat in front of television viewers who had never before watched the brutality of war in the comfort of their homes.
Michael Cimino himself also lost artistically. After “The Deer Hunters” he took on a monumentally epic Western “Heaven’s Gate”which financially ruined the United Artist label and strongly influenced Hollywood financing of expensive original films. Cimino’s film cost the equivalent of today’s $200 million and brought in… $1.5 million in revenue. Hollywood was never the same after this failure.
For years, Cimino tried to return to greatness, often causing the same controversieswhich happened during “The Deer Hunter”. His now cult in some circles “Year of the Dragon” (1985) was accused of racism against Asians, “The Sicilian” (1987) based on Mario Puzo could not withstand comparisons with Coppola’s films, while “The Desperate Hours” (1990) and “Catching up with the Sun” (1996) completely disappeared from the radar in the 1990s, already marked by Quentin Tarantino’s revolution.
Cimino died in 2016, an eccentric and loner. His life was commented not through the prism of his directorial genius, but through his increasingly strange appearance and behavior. Another cinema screening “The Deer Hunters” however, reminds that Michael Cimino made one of the greatest works in the history of cinema. This is a masterpiece not about war at all, but about friendship and survival.