The Deer Hunter starts off in a small town in Pennsylvania. We meet a group of 6 friends who go from working in a small factory in their home town to fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. Three of them go, and have no idea about the changes that they are about to experience.
In the first hour of so of the movie we see how close knit these men's families are. We see the wedding of Stephen and Angela. Everyones trying to do last minutes preparations for the wedding. This shows again, how important family is to these men and how they are going to lose it once they get to Vietnam. There will be no family or love over there. Just misery and horror.
The "coming-home" section is when the three men are back from the war. It shows the struggles all three face trying to adapt back into their normal lives. Micheal has the hardest time with this. His friends and family threw him a welcome home party, but as he neared the house, he asked the taxi driver to keep going. He couldnt face all the people that he had left behind. Stephen wasn't so lucky while he was in the war. He had to get his legs aputated. He comes home and tries to act normal but he cannot. He resorted to a Veterans hospital because he could not cope. Nick never returned home from the war. He stayed in Vietnam. The side effects of war were too much for him, and he couldnt go back to what he once had.
After watching this film, i believe that it is an anit-war film. It spends a lot of time showing the negative effects that the was had, not only on the soldiers but their families and friends too. It shows how everything around these men changed. Their home lives and themselves. Once they went to war, they were not the same again.
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The Deer Hunter is a movie about three friends who go from working in a factory in Pennsylvania to fighting in the jungles of Vietnam
ReplyDeleteThe first hour of the movie really focuses on the lives of the men before they go to war. We see Steven and Angela get married, and how close all their friends and families are. This symbolizes what they are leaving behind when they go off to war. The men will not have anyone there to love them or help them through hard times. A little later on in the movie, the three men go to a bar. A soldier who has just returned from the war walks in and the 3 friends approach him and begin asking him questions about the war. At first he doesn’t answer them; he just looks angry and miserable. They keep bothering him and asking him questions until he finally responds “Fuck it.” At this point we can see the effects that the war has on soldiers. This also foreshadows what is to come for these three men.
After the wedding, the friends go on a hunting trip. Mikey is the only one that kills a deer. After this scene, the movie jumps into a Vietnamese village where the three men have just been captured. They end up escaping but we begin to realize their lives will not be the same again.
The next section is the “coming home” part or the movie. Mikey comes home first. He is welcomed home by all of his friends and family with a welcome home party. As the taxi driver gets close to the house however, he asks him to turn around because he doesn’t think he’s ready to face all these people again. He then goes and visits Linda the next day. She brings him out around town and finally see’s all the people he had left behind. We then see Steven. While he was in Vietnam, he had his leg amputated. Since he’s been home he feels like he doesn’t fit in. He can’t bear the fact that he’s different from everyone else so he leaves his family and friends and goes to a veteran’s hospital. As we find out soon after, Nick stayed in Vietnam and never came back to the States. The only person who can lead somewhat of a normal life is Mikey. All three of them had very different experiences and each one came back changed.
After watching the film, I believe that it is an anti-war film. It shows the negative effects that war has on the soldiers, their friends and families, and even the Vietnamese whose lives were turned upside down by the entrance of the American forces.