Blog 10 KSP

The Deer Hunter directed by Michael Cimino depicts the lives of a group of friends who go from working in a factory in Pennsylvania to fighting in the jungle of Vietnam. In this particular group of men there are six friends, but only three of the men go off to war-Michael, Steven, and Nick.

The first hour of the movie focuses on the lives the men had before the war, and the marriage of Steven to Angela. The audience sees the bridesmaids running about town, the church being prepared, and groomsmen planning a hunting trip for after the wedding. In this movie, the event of the wedding symbolizes what the men will be leaving behind when the go to war. There is no love or family in war there is only pain and the will to survive. During the reception the three men going to war are toasted by all in attendance which shows the typical hometown pride for its soldiers. One of the most poignant and foreshadowing events comes while the men are in the back of the bar drunk. A soldier who has just arrived home from Vietnam comes into the bar, and the three men going to war ask him what it was like. The soldier looked angry and did not say anything to them. The men wanted an answer so they kept pestering the soldier who finally responded, “Fuck ‘em”. When Michael heard the soldier’s response he wanted to fight him, but his friends restrained him. It was in this moment that the after effects of the war could be seen. The audience can see that these men know nothing of the horrors they are about to embark on, and that this soldier is too deeply affected to share what he has seen and has had to do.

After the wedding, the men go on a hunting trip and Mikey is the only who kills a deer. It is here that he becomes the leader figure in the movie. After this scene the film picks up in Vietnam where a village has just been destroyed, and Mikey, Steven, and Nicky are taken hostage by the Vietnamese. These three men along with other soldiers are kept in waist deep water in bamboo cages. While captured the men are forced to take part in the game Russian Roulette. Fortunately the men are able to escape, but their lives are forever changed.

The next section of the movie highlights each man’s “coming home”. The first man the audience sees return home is Michael. His friends had prepared a welcome home party, but as the taxi driver nears the house he asks him to go to the highway because he is not ready to face all of the people that were left behind. The next day Michael goes to Linda’s house where he is warmly greeted. Linda then brings him around town, and finally he goes to see his buddies at the factory. Later on Mikey finds out that Steven returned to the States, but his homecoming was not the same. While in Vietnam, Steven had to have his legs amputated, so once he returned home he felt different from everyone else. This made Steven take refuge in a Veteran’s Hospital away from his wife and child. Steven could not bear the physical side effects of war and had to leave his family and friends in order to cope. Nick on the other hand remained in Vietnam and did not even come back to the United States. While Steven is in the hospital, Mikey visits him and Steven shows him the money and elephants that are sent to him every month. Steven does not know where it comes from, but Mikey says that it comes from Nicky. Therefore, Mikey packs up and travels to Vietnam in order to find him. Eventually Mikey learns that his friend continually plays the game of Russian Roulette. Once he finds Nicky, he asks him if he knows who he is, but Nicky is so far removed from reality that he replies, “No”. Mikey asks him to stop playing the game, but during one of the rounds Nicky is unlucky and shoots himself in the head. Nicky never returned home from the war, and even minutes before his death he was not himself. In Mark Levy’s speech he said that most soldiers try their best to cope in the ways they know how to, and for Nicky that meant forgetting all that he left behind and turning to a life of chance. Each man had a very different experience in terms of “coming home”, and Michael was the only one of the three to return to a somewhat normal life.

After watching the film, I believe it is an anti-war film. The film depicts how war has changed and negatively affected the lives of the three men, as well as the effects war has had on their families and friends. The soldier at the beginning responded by saying “Fuck ‘em”, but that was not directed at the three men but rather at the Vietnamese. This war changed the lives of millions of people, and the soldiers who did survive were left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. In the last scenes of the movie, many parts of Vietnam are in flames as a result of the fall of Saigon. This again shows the destruction that war brings about.