this is this
by Douglas Messerli
Deric Washburn and Michael Cimino (screenplay,
based on a story by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker), Michael Cimino
(director) The Deer Hunter / 1978
When my
companion Howard and I first saw Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter in 1978, I was very moved by it; but after my
strongly leftist friend, Bruce Andrews, discussed with me his disdain for its
portrayal of the Vietnamese, I had to agree; and after that I began to think of
the movie quite differently, particularly since there has never been any
documentation that the Viet Cong actually played Russian roulette with their
captives. Liberal critics, such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Saris, moreover, had
pilloried the movie. Over the years, and particularly after the hubris Cimino
revealed in his huge flop of a film, Heaven’s
Gate, any enthusiasm I once felt had dwindled away. Even The Deer Hunter, given Cimino’s
near-maniacal meticulousness, cost the producers twice their committed budget.
Yet, upon the death
of Cimino on July 2nd of this year, I determined to once again watch the film,
but, despite its later inclusion The National Film Registry, was still put off
by its three-hour length. When I could not get a copy of Heaven’s Gate, however, I dutifully ordered The Deer Hunter and determinedly sat down to watch. After all this
time, I perceived it with a less jaundiced eye, and returned to my first gut
feelings. It was, after all, an excellent work of art, even if its portrayal of
the Vietnamese was exaggerated and its central metaphor—that the Viet Nam war
for all those involved and even those who remained home a bit like playing a
dangerous game of chance that utterly effected generations of Americans—was more
than somewhat exaggerated, particularly given the other sketchy plot elements
of the three central figures during the war and after.
It is only in
the first act, the early steel mill clips, the long wedding scene and the deer
hunting trip after, that we truly get to know something about the lives and
personalities of the film’s characters, which explains Act 1’s hour-long
length. Without that, indeed, we could not begin to comprehend the hero’s later
behavior as captives and escapees. And surely we might find it impossible to
believe the self-destructive actions of Nick Chevotarevich (Christopher
Walken). Presumably, that is why the director needed his cut of 3 hours rather
than the studio cut of 2.
What now became even more apparent
watching the film this time around, was that these several friends, mostly of
Russian extraction, working in the steel mill of the small town of Clairton,
Pennsylvania are already living in a kind of hell. Their small homes are
ramshackle creations that might remind one almost of Popeye’s comic Sweethaven.
Parents are brutal and dominating; Linda Prior’s (Meryl Streep) drunken father
even beats her, while Steven Pushkov’s (John Savage) mother takes a stick to
him to bring him home.
These men find
their little pleasures primarily in one another’s company, falling into
relationships with the opposite sex seemingly by accident. Steve is about to
marry a woman who is expecting another man’s baby. And Mike Vronsky (Robert De
Niro) and Nick are both attracted to Linda. Their work in the mills, where they
faced with its Vulcan flames, is very much like their battles in Viet Nam and
the horrors of Saigon.
Together these
men share alcohol and horse around with one another as if they were eternal
adolescents, using of the language of high school locker rooms and wrestling
with one another while describing anyone who acts in any other manner as
“faggots.”
Film critic Robin
Wood has described their relationships as “homosocial bonding.” And like him, I
now perceive a “putative homosexual subtext” in this film, particularly in the
relationship between Mike and Nick. Mike, indeed, is the most controlling and
seemingly mature of his group, and Nick, younger and more charmingly open to
the world around him.
Cimino
establishes their relationship early in the film as they celebrate at the local
bar, John’s —which Wood correctly argues complements the later gambling den in
Saigon—together sharing a game of pool as Frankie Vali croons out Bob Crewe’s
lyrics (Crewe, an acquaintance, was openly gay) to “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off of
You” while they sing along, almost longingly staring down each other:
You're just
too good to be true
I can't take
my eyes off you
You'd be
like heaven to touch
I wanna hold
you so much
At long last
love has arrived
And I thank
God I'm alive
You're just
too good to be true
Can't take
my eyes off you
I’m not so
certain that I might go as far as Wood does when he argues that Nick’s fixation
with Russian roulette is a displacement of the time when he and Mike were most
closely bonded in their captivity, and which he describes as "a
monstrously perverted enactment of the union he has always desired.” But their
interconnection is palpable, even at the wedding ceremony, and it is their
unstated love which, perhaps, also explains their attraction to the same woman.
Moreover, Nick clearly does feel betrayed
by Mike when not only does the more dominant of them insists they must leave
behind their weaker friend, Steve, but when later in Viet Nam when both Nick
and Steve are left to possibly die when Mike makes his helicopter escape (their
breathtaking drop back into the river was, evidently, an accident which Cimino
left in the film cut that nearly killed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond).
Mike is definitely a controller. He insists
that anyone killing a deer must do it with one “clean bullet.” And when
somewhat finicky and fussy friend Stan (John Cazale) wants to borrow his extra
footwear, having once again forgotten to bring his own, he absolutely refuses,
astonishing the more compliant Nick. Yet, it is Mike who brings the legless
Steve back from the Veteran hospital to his wife, and it is Mike who flies to
Saigon to claim Nick from the insanity of his behavior—even if that act ends in
Nick’s suicide. Mike is believer in the obvious: “This is this,” he declares.
In some respects—although
he has, in his mad game of chance, truly gone into a kind of insane trance—Nick
may be the greatest truth teller of the group. He has come to recognize the war
for what it truly is: a deadly nihilist game of chance. And just like the
daring William James in Kathryn Bigelow’s The
Hurt Locker, so has Nick become addicted to war and its dangers, from which
even Mike’s love cannot cure him. Surely, he realizes that in his “This is
this” attitude, Mike will always insist upon normality, however repressive that
may be. And Nick knows their deep love could never possibly be consummated.
The last scene, played out after Nick’s
funeral in this small town American version of hell, reveals that, in fact, all
of the survivors, Steve, his wife Angela, Mike, Linda, Stan, and the bar owner
John Welsh are, somewhat at least, deluded in their naïve patriotism. But by
choosing “God Bless America” to sing aren’t they also asking for guidance,
praying for God himself to come down to show their country the way to move
forward?
As I have
written several times in this volume, I am not a believer. I cannot imagine any
god who can “bless” or has “blessed” this country. But I also cannot dismiss
anyone who wishes for further guidance and a desire for future hope. Despite
many initial viewers’ negative reactions, it’s this ending that helps to make
what, otherwise, is a deeply negative view of the world, into a great movie. In
the Viet Nam war (in any war), Cimino and his co-writers suggest, many
Americans lost their innocence; but most went on to reclaim their lives. It’s
too bad, it seems, that we must rediscover these truths again and again.
Los Angeles,
July 18, 2016
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (July 2016).
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