I had not seen The Deer Hunter since I was about 21 or 22 years old, and I remember exactly how I felt after seeing it then. I felt like that was three hours that I would never get back. I felt like it was a film without a point, without a cohesive story, and a film that was just depressing. Well, I could not have been more wrong. After watching it this past weekend, I now see that this is a film with a very clear and explicit point, a story that is cohesive and about redemption and compassion and forgiveness, and while it does have a depressing tone, it is not as depressing as you might think, and even has a fairly uplifting finish. This is a film that has an incredible amount of depth, and while it doesn’t have the traditional story structure, it’s still a well told story with a clear Hero’s Journey. In fact, the story is a journey. It’s a long journey without a clear destination. It’s like life. And while The Deer Hunter isn’t one of my favorite Best Picture winners, it certainly is one of the most thought provoking and intense films to take home the Oscars’ top honor.

I mentioned a moment ago that The Deer Hunter doesn’t have a traditional structure. While that’s technically true, it’s still a story that’s told in three acts. The difference is that each act lasts a full hour, rather than the first two acts each coming in around 30 minutes each with Act 2 lasting an hour in between, which is the more traditional structure. However, there is still a clear Hero’s Journey for the main character, Michael (Robert De Niro).

Michael’s Ordinary World is a small steel mill town in Pennsylvania in which he lives, and we meet the cast of characters that are the friends that we assume he’s had for his entire life. His friends Nick (Christopher Walken), Steven (John Savage), Stan (John Cazale), and Axel all work with Michael at the mill, and their other friend John (George Dzundza) runs the local bar. These guys are good buddies. They work together, they drink together and they hunt together. Michael and Nick even live together.

We find out right away that Michael, Nick and Steven are all about to be deployed to Vietnam in a couple of days, and Steven is going to marry his pregnant girlfriend that night. They all go drinking in John’s bar before the wedding, and at one point are singing I Love You, Baby along with the jukebox. There isn’t a ton of storytelling going on here from a plot progression standpoint, but there is a ton of storytelling going on here from a character development standpoint. We see that the world these guys live in, despite the vast wilderness around them that they traverse when they hunt, is very small. They’ve likely never traveled far from their small town, and in fact, everyone in this town knows each other. It is an insular world, and the fact that they know nothing of the world outside is articulated when they meet the soldier at the bar and tell him how excited they are to join the fighting. The battle weary soldier can only look at them and say, “Fuck it.”

That scene happens during Steven’s wedding reception, which lasts a good 40 minutes of screen time. We also learn during that sequence Nick’s girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep) might have a secret crush on Michael, who might also reciprocate those feelings. We also find out that Steven may not be the father of his wife’s baby, but instead Stan possibly is.

The following day they go on their last deer hunt, and Michael’s mantra is “one shot”. If he can’t kill a deer in one shot, then he won’t kill it. We see him working in tandem with Nick, and they’re a great team. Sure enough, Michael tracks down a buck, and kills it with one shot.

Again, there isn’t a lot of story movement, but we are learning about these characters and it is creating such depth within all of them that we really feel like we know them in profound and personal ways. Seriously, the first hour of this film is 100% character development, and it’s sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always compelling. I think it would be very difficult to get a film like this made today. I don’t think that a mass audience would be able to sit through a film like The Deer Hunter without getting restless. Much like myself when I saw this film at the age of 21 or 22, I wasn’t ready for a film like this. I was used to films having linear stories that got moving with an inciting incident that would happen no more than 5-7 minutes in to the film, and then the storyline would proceed accordingly. The Deer Hunter doesn’t follow that model. It’s very important for us to know these people so that we can care about them in a deep way when things really do start to happen. I was reminded of a modern version of this that happens on a much smaller scale. The PIXAR film The Incredibles is about a family of super heroes who have to go in to hiding after a series of events that make them fall out of favor with the government and with the public in general. Brad Bird was the director of the film and there’s a scene where the family is sitting around the dinner table talking about their day. There is no action for the most part, and for a solid 3-5 minutes, all we’re getting is character development. We learn about the family’s dynamic, economic situation and social standing. And Bird had to fight like crazy to keep it in the movie. Studio executives wanted it cut because they felt that it slowed down the story, but Bird argues rightly that the story depended on this scene because this scene was where we learned enough about the characters so that we would really care about them as human beings at the critical moments. That’s exactly what The Deer Hunter did for the first hour of the film.

That was important because Michael, Nick and Steven leave their Ordinary World behind and enter the Special World of Vietnam. The next hour of the film is spent here in varying places and degrees of intensity. The three buddies find themselves in a small Vietnamese prison camp where the prisoners are kept in a bamboo cage in the river before being forced to play Russian roulette. This is one of the most intense and gut wrenching scenes I’ve ever sat through. Steven is so overcome by the situation that he starts to scream in panic. Nick is holding it together, but us frozen with fear. Only Michael is able to keep his composure to a level that allows him to think of a plan to escape. At one point he’s even willing to leave Steven behind after they throw him in the pit. Mocking insanity to his captors, Michael somehow maintains the ability to keep a clear head. As the lead captor keeps slapping him in the face, Michael wants desperately to kill him. He demands that three bullets be put in the gun, and puts his own life and the life of Nick in much more peril, but it’s necessary to his plan. These are two small town Pennsylvania boys fighting for their lives in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle. The first act has made us care so much for these guys that when the trigger is pulled and all you hear is the click of the hammer hitting the empty chamber, you can’t help but let out with an audible gasp. Finally, Michael’s plan comes through as he’s able to use the extra bullets in the chamber to shoot his captor between the eyes, and use the chaos to grab a machine gun from another one and shoot the rest of the unsuspecting captors.

The other thing about this scene is that it takes a long time. It takes a long time to build the intensity to its ultimate crescendo. Here is where the film’s director Michael Cimino deserves a huge amount of credit. He showed in The Deer Hunter that he is a patient film maker and he will not be rushed. We sit through this scene watching prisoner after hapless prisoner blow his own brains out for the entertainment and gambling fix of these sadistic captors. They take so much pleasure in not only the deaths of these men, but also in the fearful state that they put them through first. It would be easy to just execute them. These men would rather have fun doing it. And Cimino shows that through the slow build of the scene. Another thing that really got my attention during this scene was when the trigger was pulled on an empty chamber. In an excellent example of how sound is half of your film, the sound of the click was just as loud as the sound of the shot. It was so intense that is was almost more gut wrenching to hear the click of an empty chamber than the shot of a loaded one.

Michael and the others escape, but Steven will never get over his physical wounds and Nick will never get over his mental and emotional wounds. They all get separated again and Nick is taken to a field hospital in Saigon where he suffers a complete breakdown. On leave, he happens across an arena where men are playing Russian roulette for money, and a French gambler offers Nick a way to make money doing that. Michael happens to be there and sees Nick and tries to chase him down, but it’s too late. The Frenchman has ensnared Nick in his trap.

Act 3 starts with Michael arriving home. It is the archetypal return from the strange land with new knowledge and a new perspective on life. Everything is mostly the same, but slightly different, as noted by Stan’s long hair and mustache. The town is the same, but Michael is totally different. He has no interest in attending a party celebrating his return, and he no longer fits in with these people the way he used to. These are simple people leading simple lives, and his life, by virtue of what he went through in the Special World, doesn’t fit here anymore. His life is more complicated and he’s no longer comfortable in this world. The one thing that he has here that he wants is Linda, but she’s betrothed to Nick, and Michael’s loyalty to him, even though he doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive, keeps him at first from succumbing to the desire to completely be with her. But he is distant from his friends, and when they go on a deer hunt, he has a deer in his sights, but cannot bring himself to shoot it. Michael now has a compassion that he never had before. He has experienced death, and that has given him a new value for life.

Unfortunately that value for life has one last test when he discovers that Nick has been sending Steven money. Saigon is about to fall, but Michael goes back to try and find Nick. He does finally find him getting paid to play Russian roulette, and he has to bargain with the managers of the game to take Nick with him. But Nick is so far gone mentally that he doesn’t even recognize Michael until Michael has to put the gun to his own head and pull the trigger. After it clicks, Michael begs Nick to just come home, and Nick replies, “Just one shot”. It’s one shot too many, though, as Nick pulls the trigger on a loaded chamber and kills himself.

Back in Pennsylvania they have Nick’s funeral, and everyone gets together at John’s bar for a remembrance. After some emotional struggles, John starts humming God Bless America, and then Linda starts singing it. Finally everyone joins in and they end by raising their glasses in a toast to Nick. To me, this is a very powerful ending that is telling us as a country that it’s time to move on from Vietnam. It’s time to let those wounds heal, let the dead rest in peace, and get on with our lives as a society. In that moment we also realize that this film is far greater than the sum of its parts. This is a film that is about redemption and forgiveness and loyalty. Thematically it may be one of the strongest films that I’ve ever seen, but you have to be willing to put in some effort as a viewer in order to fully appreciate it. It’s a thinking person’s film that requires patience to follow the film where it’s going. If you can do that, you will be rewarded by enjoying this very fine film.

I need to say one more thing as an aside and that is to write a small tribute to John Cazale. He was sick with cancer when this film was shooting and he died shortly after filming wrapped. It was a tragic loss. Think about where he could have gone as an actor. He was a supporting actor in five films: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Three of those films won Best Picture and the other two were nominated for Best Picture. Yes, he was a supporting actor in all of them, but he gave some powerful performance, particularly in The Godfather Part II and Dog Day Afternoon. The scene in The Godfather Part II in which he breaks down to Michael about how no one ever believed in him and how he’s smarter than people think he is, is a heartbreakingly powerful scene. His overall performance as Sal in Dog Day Afternoon is amazing, as he is constantly on the edge, just about to lose control and kill all of the hostages. He played it perfectly, so you believed that he could go crazy without ever showing that he would. It was an amazing performance by an amazing actor who was taken from us far too soon.

Did the Academy get it right?

I believe they did. While there were some excellent films nominated in 1978, like Heaven Can Wait and Midnight Express, The Deer Hunter is just one of those films that is on a different level. It has classic elements of mythic structure that speak to very deep levels of our psyche and the filmmakers used those elements to tell an effective story that, while it wasn’t told in a traditional way, was no less effective at evoking raw emotions and feelings that made this a very powerful film. It was truly deserving of being named the Best Picture of 1978.