The Deer Hunter

I watched this movie this week. It was a movie that allows you have to have different opinions about it. Robert De Niro was wonderful in it. Christopher Walken was very good, a far cry from some of his less serious roles of late.

A young Meryl Streep is beautiful and subdued in her role. Reading the backstory one cannot help but center on John Cazale. After playing Frodo in the Godfather movies his place in movie lore is assured. In this movie he sealed it by despite having end stage lung cancer which had moved to his bones she chose to take this role. Meryl Streep,his fiance at the time joined him in the movie was the woman caught between Walken and De Niro.

The movie told in 4 scenes goes between Vietnam and Clairton, Pennsylvania. The main characters, all Russian Americans are all affected in some way by the war.

The movie won Best Picture and while I liked the movie that seems extreme. The Vietnam scenes, and extended scenes of forced Russian roulette were extreme then and are extreme now. Walken's character Christoper, after going AWOL gets sucked into the gambling scene in a fallen Saigon and that seems a little off from the rest of the believability of the movie.

For me however the most memorable scene is the last scene. After the funeral for Christopher the characters are having coffee around a table. Cazale, whose scenes were filmed first as he was literally at deaths door, is seated next to Streep while the characters somberly reflect on the loss of their friend. In the movie the characters did not interact much so this seating must be on purpose. As a final gesture to the real life couple who would soon be facing Cazale's death. This and this alone makes this movie memorable.