Here's one...

...that I've never really gotten my head around.

This is the quest to write about my reactions to watching every film in the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition) in a calendar year.  I'm nearing 20% through.  Rules as to how I picked the order of viewing here.

Film 18

18.  "The Deer Hunter" (AFI Rank #53)
This is now the fourth Best Picture Oscar winner I've watched in a row, and the sixth of the last seven.  It is odd, I must say, to focus so much energy to watching tremendous film after tremendous film.

I have watched "The Deer Hunter" one time prior to this year's viewing.  I was 10 when the film came out, and while there was certainly talk about it, I was, obviously, too young to know/hear anything much about it.  A few years back, for some reason, it was on one of the cable channels, and I decided to watch it.  I remember feeling lost watching it, not really getting it, and mostly feeling empty.

Same thing happened this time...except now I realize all that was on purpose.

This is a tough film to like.  It is really just a slice of life tale of a group of  friends from Clairton, Pennsylvania, and three of them who go to Vietnam.  The opening of the film lasts a fairly long while.  In it, we are introduced to a group of blue-collar friends who are in the midst of preparing for the wedding of a couple of young people.  It appears as if it is a shotgun wedding, and that the groom doesn't necessarily believe he's the father.  While we are at the wedding at what I assume to be the local VFW, we see large photos of three of our principle characters, played by John Savage (Stevie), Christopher Walken (Nick) and Robert DeNiro (Michael).  Surrounding their photos are buntings of American flags, and the words "Good luck" are present.  Eventually, as the evening wears on, we learn that the three of them are about to ship off to Vietnam.  We then see a brief sequence of the three being reunited in a village in Vietnam.

Our next major setpiece is floating Viet Cong prison, where the prisoners are brought up one by one, forced to play Russian Roulette, then discarded when the inevitable shot through their skull happens.  It is cruel, as the prisoners are kept in a cage, river water up to their waists, below the floor of the "playing arena."  Blood from the losers of the game flows onto them.

Stevie is the first of the friends (somehow all three wound up here - really?) to be dragged into the game.  He chickens out, and winds up grazing his skull when he pulls the gun back at the last moment.  He is thrown into an even crueler cage, where the water is above his neck, filled with rats and corpses.  It looks like hell.  He is also in the sun.  I cannot imagine a human would last long there.

Eventually, Nick and Michael are pitted against each other.  Michael insists that his captors put 3 bullets in the magazine.  He places the gun against his head, pulls the trigger on a blank chamber.  He then begs Nick to put another empty chamber in the gun.  Nick pulls the trigger...again to nothing.  Michael now has a gun with 4 chambers filled with 3 bullets.  In a move that could only be pulled by a desperate man, he is able to overwhelm the captors, using the element of surprise to kill the leader, then grabbing the weapons of the stunned guards to kill the rest.  Freed of their bonds, Michael and Nick rescue Stevie (who has a compound fracture in at least one leg - later we learn it was both) and float down the river.  A helicopter flies overhead, spots them, and attempts a rescue.  They are able to only get Nick on the chopper.  Michael carries the wounded Stevie to a road filled with refugees, where he deposits him on a South Vietnamese Jeep.  Michael is now left to wander Vietnam, as is Nick.  Nick finds his way, inexplicably, into a kind of Russian Roulette league, Stevie winds up in a VA hospital, and Michael is sent home during the fall of Saigon.

Returning home, Michael takes up residence with Nick's girlfriend, Linda, played by Meryl Streep.  Winding up in the group of friends that stayed behind, nothing has really changed about the town, and the customs/day to day life.  One thing that has changed, however, is Michael's ability to hunt deer.  A legendary crack shot, Michael, in a memorable sequence, is face to face with a glorious buck.  Taking the shot, we see Michael pull up on the rifle, missing his quarry.  It's a shocking image, watching a man so skilled be so utterly incapable of doing that which used to give him pleasure.

As the film closes, Michael journeys back to Vietnam to fetch Nick, who has been sending home piles of cash; his spoils from his prowess in the Russian Roulette circuit.  He finds Nick, and the two again have a duel.  This time, Nick finally runs out his string, and the pistol goes off, killing him.  Michael is left to go home and bury his friend.

So.  That's a load of synopsis.

Here's my thoughts.  This is a gritty, dirty film.  It's from the school of the 70's, most assuredly, that breathed in reality, that often was maddeningly vague, and that really made films that we could "get."  The opening sequence with characters coming in and out, culminating in the wedding...it's a whirlwind.  Michael Cimino may have bankrupted an entire movie studio with "Heaven's Gate," but films like this are why he was allowed to do so.  I like how Vietnam is like a rumor throughout the opening.  It's mentioned, sure, but it's never dealt with in an "OH MY GOD" kinda way.  It makes the film feel like a moment in time.  As a child of the late 80's, when films like "The Killing Fields," "Platoon," and "Full Metal Jacket" really brought Vietnam to us in a overwhelming fashion, "The Deer Hunter" treats it like a duty that a few guys we are watching are going to fulfill.

The Vietnam sequences are heartbreaking.  The shot of a Viet Cong soldier throwing a hand grenade into a bunker full of a family, with children, women, and elderly in it...that shit tears your senses.  Showing one of those family members, wounded, and carrying her dead child from that bunker, only to be ripped apart by bullets is just as much sensory overload.  This shit happens.  I get it.  I don't like seeing it.  Somehow, though, it makes sense in this film.  The prison is a terror.  The end of the Vietnam War is depressing.  Lots of heavy stuff happens.  And all of it seems somewhat OK...and not...at the same time.

The imagery of the deer standing almost in defiance (or sacrifice) of Michael as he takes the ill aimed shot following his return from war is amazing.  It's a gorgeous picture.

It would be hard to comment on this film without talking about the acting.  Everyone in this plays each character like a real person.  The overmatched John Savage (dude really couldn't act) is the only role that feels unnatural.  Walken, for all his quirks, is spot on in this, even though I never really buy into the Russian Roulette League.  Streep is gorgeous, and as natural as always.  What a treasure she is.  DeNiro?  Well.  DeNiro used to be so fucking great.  It's a shame that he so infrequently gets to flex the muscles he used to use so casually.  This film, filled with subtle moments, filled with DeNiro bravado, is just another one that as he gets a little older, he can look and say, "I did that."  He's tremendous.  DeNiro headlines 5 films in the top 100.  There's a reason why those films are great.  Part of that has to do with the dude in the lead.  John Cazale, who is his usual great self, died shortly before this was released, had the most charmed, albeit brief acting careers.  Dude made 5 major motion pictures in his life.  You know what they were?  "The Godfather," "The Conversation," "The Godfather Part II," "Dog Day Afternoon," and "The Deer Hunter."  Know what's unique about all that?  All 5 were nominated for Best Picture, with 3 of them winning.  Pretty good run, however brief.

I appreciate "The Deer Hunter," but I don't think I like it.  I don't know that I'm supposed to.  I can, however, love good art when it is presented to me, and that's what this is.  A whole pile of good art.  Watch it again, if you've seen it before, or watch it the first time if you haven't.

Ebert never did a "Great Movies" essay about "The Deer Hunter," but I'll be damned if I haven't caught some of his criticism here, in his original review.  Damn.