The Deer Hunter (1978)

In this article, we will be looking at 2019’s book “1001 Movies to See Before You Die” and going through each film in a random order that I have chosen. We will be looking at what constitutes this film to be on the list and whether I think this film deserves to be here at all. I want to make perfectly clear that I won’t be revealing details from this book such as analyses by film reporters who have written about the film in question, so if you want the book itself you’ll have to buy it. But I will be covering the book’s suggestions on which films should be your top priority. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that everyone reading this article has probably watched many of these movies anyway. But we are just here to have a bit of fun. We’re going to not just look at whether it should be on this list but we’re also going to look at why the film has such a legacy at all. Remember, this is the 2019 version of the book and so, films like “Joker” will not be featured in this book and any film that came out in 2020 (and if we get there, in 2021). So strap in and if you have your own suggestions then don’t hesitate to email me using the address in my bio. Let’s get on with it then.

The Deer Hunter (1978) dir. by Michael Cimino

Released in the December of 1978, the epic drama film based in the Vietnam War stars Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken. The director was very conscious about the way the film would be an Oscar contender and released it in a way that would create a build-up towards this.

Though, if you have read about this film, many people have criticised one of the most iconic scenes in the film, the Russian Roulette scene, as having no historical presence in the Viet Cong during that time. Roger Ebert came to the rescue again and defended this scene:

"...it is the organising symbol of the film: Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous.”

Veteran film critic and biographer, David Thomson also agreed that the Russian Roulette scene was required even though there was a controversy around it:

"There were complaints that the North Vietnamese had not employed Russian roulette. It was said that the scenes in Saigon were fanciful or imagined. It was also suggested that De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage were too old to have enlisted for Vietnam (Savage, the youngest of the three, was thirty). Three decades later [written in 2008], 'imagination' seems to have stilled those worries ... and The Deer Hunter is one of the great American films.”

I think that Pauline Kael had an interesting take on the film. She took an approach of looking at the violence and impression of the film upon the audience members. It is compared to other war movies of the same or different wars. She states:

"The Vietcong are treated in the standard inscrutable-evil Oriental style of the Japanese in the Second World War movies ... The impression a viewer gets is that if we did some bad things there we did them ruthlessly but impersonally; the Vietcong were cruel and sadistic.”

And obviously, Vanity Fair takes a look at the political agenda behind the film:

"It may have been more a by-product of Hollywood myopia, the demands of the war-film genre, garden-variety American parochialism, and simple ignorance than it was the pre-meditated right-wing road map it seemed to many.”

But again, we need to see Roger Ebert’s opinion on this and he has since stated the following after giving the film four out of four stars in his review in the Chicago Sun-Times: "one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made.”

I may have watched this film whilst drunk, but he is definitely right here. Concise and correct as always - well, most of the time.