‘I really don’t know how I feel’

The Deer Hunter

God sometimes it’s damn hard to pick a single great scene from a movie I really love. The Deer Hunter is one of those films that I’d always include in a top ten favorite movies, it’s just such a wonderfully luscious piece of movie-making. Over its huge running time it feels like you could so easily sink into it, just absorb the atmosphere and the characters. Obviously there are bits you’d rather fall into more than others – I’d definitely take the hunting trip over the rat filled bamboo cage for a weekend away. Overall though it’s difficult to break this film down into scenes, so much of it resonates with what you’ve seen up till that point and on future viewings is filled with expectation and sadness over what will come.

Although it seems episodic in structure the film never really feels that way to me, I think particularly due to the lack of events that don’t relate the characters to each other. Even scenes that start of looking independent – such as the start of the events in Vietnam quickly reveal themselves to be points of contact between the protagonists. It creates a tapestry of personal moments that define a town’s experience of Vietnam – a very real town at that.

You can sometimes see those times a film maker has rushed around trying to create the perfect ‘everyman’ town – a representation of a period by being as normal as possible. The example that always sticks in my mind is for historical dramas, where a set design has seen the film is set in 1798, so every single object comes from exactly that period, every wall has paintings from that time and every item of clothing matching the time. Of course, that isn’t reality; it’s a doll’s house.

With the setting in The Deer Hunter there’s something much more real, a sense of a real layered community presented through real locations. It’s the quirks that make it so real, the accents that are off, the first-generation’s old country style of dress and speech. It comes together to make something that is at the same time unique and representative of towns across the world.
So it’s to represent this feeling of realism that I picked the scene of Michael’s return. I think it’s a tremendously sad moment but one that makes me feel that these are about as close to real people in a real community as I’ve ever seen on film.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mhyrVCjZO_U