Yeah, that’s right. I just watched it for the first time. For the record, I have yet to see Raging Bull, The Great Escape, or Battleship Potemkin either. However, by the power vested in me by Netflix, it won’t be long. So feel free to chide me, but damn it, I’m trying.
I avoided watching The Deer Hunter for… my entire life… because I knew just enough about it to know that I was not going to walk out whistling a happy tune. It takes a pretty big act of will for me to go into a theatre or sit down in front of the TV for three hours knowing that, in the end, no one really gets out alive.
I’m not stupid. I’m just a pussy. I know great art doesn’t have to have a happy ending, but if I have a choice between that which is billed as the end all be all of rip your heart out drama or a film that might make me smile just a little, I tend to go with the fluff. However, as part of a long-standing effort to suck it up, I finally rented it last week.
Now what do you say about that movie? Talking about the performances would be silly; they’re obviously great. Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, and Meryl Streep just to start. Who’s gonna’ argue with that kind of firepower? The only place you could go wrong is with the story. And it was great. Riveting. Three hours and I never got up to get a drink of water or take a leak. But that last scene…
I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I live in a time when I feel like my country’s flag is a little torn up. Maybe it’s because I don’t carry the psychic wounds from Vietnam that needed tending, but went unacknowledged for so long. Maybe I’m more cynical than I would like to believe. Or maybe I was just worn out. Whatever the case may be, the end of The Deer Hunter, with its ham-fisted round-table sing-along, sort of left me cold. And, I guess, maybe that was the point.
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