THE DEER HUNTER

The key to this movie is the noise. In almost every scene, there is the clanking of plates, the back-and-forth of conversation, the singing of song, the whistles, the cheers, the jeers. There is a pervasiveness to it that seems almost intrusive until it becomes clear why the noise is so prominent. The noise is the din of life. In every scene, there is life going on. It clings to this film like spaghetti on a wall. There is an earnestness to the sounds of mayhem and anarchy. It has to be there because without it, we begin to think about the horrors of what really surrounds us.

This is especially true of the Vietnam War era. Michael Cimino directed and co-wrote this haunting look at what the war did to the din of life. In essence, it silenced lives and life itself. The importance of the film's first hour, showing us a group of friends in the labor force in rural Pennsylvania, becomes so clear when we see the horrifying moments of silence that begin to sprout in the film's final two hours. In the film's first phase, we see men working and then drinking. We see a wedding and a joyous reception. We see men together for one last hunt for deer. We see life.

These scenes may be a little disorienting and even somewhat uncomfortable. But then again, life tends to have those qualities too. And it also speaks to the genius of the film's development. We start to see moments of clarity, where the men realize the unknown of what is coming. There is a great scene between Michael (Robert De Niro) and Nick (Christopher Walken) during the wedding reception. Michael is running around naked and drunk in the streets of the town. He finally stops, sits down, and the two chat about their upcoming service in the war. Michael promises Nick that he won't leave him in Vietnam.

The promise is empty and naive. Perhaps it symbolizes the patriotic naivete during the beginning years of the war. Perhaps not. I tend to think it symbolizes the "youth" of the soldiers about to quickly grow up in the horrors of a purposeless, uncivilized bloodbath. Michael and Nick are kids even though their ages may say otherwise. Their lives are simple, and their perceptions lack experience and the wisdom of age. This is one of the few one-on-one conversations heard in the first hour of the movie. And the commotion surrounding these conversations works to amplify them.

There is a scene of uncanny power when several of the men go deer hunting just before Michael, Nick, and newly married Steven (John Savage) go off to war. Stosh (John Cazale) has once again forgotten to bring the proper equipment to the hunt. Michael does not let him off easily. When Stosh complains that Michael is being stubborn, Michael shows him a bullet and says, "This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own." The scene has multiple points, one being that Michael is somewhat of a leader to the group. The most important point, however, is that Michael's viewpoint will become muddied in the bloody macabre of Vietnam.

Sort of how shooting a deer was a victory before the war and meaningless thereafter. Michael has no qualms about killing an animal he respects, cares about, or even just sees before his stint in Vietnam. But after he comes back, he chases, he has a target, but purposely misses the shot. Killing no longer seemed rational or meaningful to Michael. The war changed him, quite dramatically.

There is a scene just before the film transitions to Vietnam of great importance. John (George Dzundza) sings a solo, and everyone around him stands quiet. It is a great passage because it is once again a silent passage. Life has stopped, but we aren't quite sure why. I think John knows, though. I think he realizes the horror of what is about to happen. He knows that nothing will be the same. It's a great use of foreshadow because it completely contradicts the tone of the first hour. And it serves as a great transition to the scenes in Vietnam.

Michael, Nick, and Steven are in battle in Vietnam and are soon captured. What happens next is one of the most horrifying sequences in film, scenes so startlingly poignant that they continue to send shivers up my spine after the many times I have seen the film. Essentially, the captors play a game of Russian roulette and bet on who will die. Of course, they are betting on whether Michael, Nick, or Steven will die. Steven is near the breaking point, and Michael calms him silently. But Michael knows it is up to Nick and himself to get them out of there. The scene is long and completely devastating. It is the effects of this event that are at the heart of the story for the rest of the film.

Nick is rescued by helicopter; Michael and Steven are left behind after Steven's leg becomes severely injured. Soon Michael leaves Vietnam, but not before he sees Nick one last time in a place he shouldn't be. But he loses him and leaves him in Vietnam.

Michael returns to Pennsylvania, lost and disoriented. His actions are not coherent, his thoughts even less so. This is most obvious in relation to a girl he has had feelings for. The girl is played by Meryl Streep, and even then, we see her acting promise. She plays the girl with a ferocious intensity and a natural sense of normalcy. She is the symbol of innocence, of what we remember before the horrors of the war. But Michael can't quite figure out how to deal with her. And he can't shoot a deer either.

But he can still admonish Stosh, this time with a more crazed animosity. When Stosh threatens one of his friends with a gun (although not really), Michael loses it and points a gun at him with an intensity only De Niro can give a scene. Stosh is horrified and silenced. The dynamics of the friends have changed.

Michael soon learns of Steven's fate. He has lost his legs. Michael struggles to see him but eventually does. He brings him home, like the bigger brother he always seemed to be to him. Steven's innocence has changed to a shocked sense of youthful apathy. And it is with these sequences that he returns to Nick in Vietnam.

Nick has joined the professional Russian roulette community. Michael finds his way to one of these "events" and sits opposite Nick, giving him the most horrendous of ultimatums. Horrendous because Nick's sense of reality is completely gone. He is not brainwashed per se, but he is in a sense dead to the world. His craving for the game is yet another aspect of the war that the filmmakers give us. The sanity of the war is completely rooted in its pointlessness. Nick needed the game, the awful game of random death. He lived in the war long enough to forget how to live in his old world. So Russian roulette was his only source of the war's random killings.

"One shot," Nick says, echoing a line Michael said earlier. Indeed. There is one shot at life, sure. There is one bullet in the gun. This bullet. The bullet is not something else. Nick was on his own, and Michael couldn't do a thing about it.

The film ends in one of the most moving passages I have seen in any film. The gang of men, the girl, Steven's wife, and Michael all sit at the bar. John is cooking some eggs and begins to cry. We hear a few clanks of silverware and plates. Life is quieter than it used to be. And John silences it one more time by singing God Bless America. Soon, the whole group begins to sing. It is a passage of remarkable power. The song, I think, is meant to be hopeful but also to be thoughtful, to remind us of the war we took part in, the soldiers who died or were forever changed by it, of a country that allowed its evolution to transpire as it did. They sing it with a strange combination of pride, hope, melancholy, and malevolence. They sing it without the sounds surrounding them. They stopped their lives to remind themselves of what being an American was and is. This is what The Deer Hunter is.