The Deer Hunter (1978)
The Deer Hunter Collectors Edition (Shout! Factory)
The Deer Hunter (1978) remains the best movie about blue-collar Pennsylvania ever made. And that’s not entirely meant as sarcasm. Although problematic in depicting the Vietnam War, The Deer Hunter was pathfinding as part of the first wave of films to grapple with America’s national trauma. What, we lost a war? That’s right, and the veterans who fought it had reason sometimes to feel overlooked, disrespected or misrepresented.
The new DVD/Blu-ray set affords an opportunity to revisit the three-hour film and appreciate its brilliant construction, cast (Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep) and many wonderful scenes—most of them set in Pennsylvania.
The lynchpin of the bonus material is the interview with one of the most provocative living film critics, David Thomson. He was present at Deer Hunter’s advanced screening in Boston and recalls the mixed, even tense response in the audience. Arguments broke out on the sidewalk outside over the accuracy of director Michael Cimino’s depiction of the war.
In the end, Thomson argues, it doesn’t matter. The Deer Hunter is less about Vietnam than the grim routine of American working-class life, a subject seldom taken seriously by Hollywood. It’s also about the insecurities of American manhood and the culture surrounding gun-ownership. Thomson sees the deer hunting scene as pivotal—a vision of America’s mythic frontier impossible to find in Pennsylvania but evocative of primal instincts.
