The Deer Hunter (VHS, 1997) and 50 similar items

"The Deer Hunter is said to be about a lot of things: friendship, loyalty, male rite of passage, the effects of a war physically, spiritually, psychologically and communally. I think of it as a movie concerned with people--their inner workings and what motivates them, what makes them tick. The movie spends a lot of time in curious zooms, simply peering into the faces and eyes of the actors. It seems content in that aspect alone. There are so many scenes to admire. The Russian Roulette sequence is particularly violent and disturbing, unleashing a dark cloud upon the rest of the characters' lives. The deer hunting scenes are beautifully photographed. I love how upon Deniro's return from Vietnam he finds he no longer needs to hunt deer for sport, tossing a revolver to the wind, realizing his experience in the war has made him repulsed by violence of any kind. I love the scene where Walken is in the hospital, post prison camp. A doctor asks him his name and Walken is so full of grief he is unable to speak, and he sobs, muttering softly, struggling for the words. The camera lingers on this pain for quite a while. I have a feeling it is the scene that won Walken the Oscar--it's quite astonishing. The ending where the entire cast sings God Bless America will simply knock you off your feet. Roger Ebert said some interesting things about it in his review in 1978: "What The Deer Hunter insists is that we not forget the war. It ends on a curious note: The singing of 'God Bless America.' I won't tell you how it arrives at that particular moment, but I do want to observe that the lyrics of "God Bless America" have never before seemed to me to contain such an infinity of possible meanings, some tragic, some unspeakably sad, some few still defiantly hopeful." To me, this is The Deer Hunter, in a nutshell. It is not Pro-war. It is not Anti-war. It is simply a record of how war enters a group of people's lives. "It is a progression from a wedding to a funeral. It is one of the most emotionally shattering movies ever made", Ebert. Could the film have benefitted from a stronger sense of editing? Yes. And no. Some folks say the Wedding Sequence drags on far too long. They may have a point. But when the film is finished, all of the events included in their entirety bring the film to a satisfying conclusion, I believe. As I said, this movie is simply concerned with people, its' characters, the ensemble. And you have to be prepared to view it through such a lens. It's not a movie EVERYONE adores. Some viewers will find the film frustrating, artsy, confounding and unsatisfying. Others will find it poignant, sincere and beautiful. I am in the latter category."