I hadn't seen this movie since it came out 43 years ago, at which point it seemed overwhelming--not perfect, just overwhelming in its scope and intensity. Of course, I was only 17 then, most of the actors were very new to audiences, and much of the content seemed groundbreaking as well as shocking. Seeing it all this time later, inevitably the credibility of the leads as "ordinary steeltown folk" would be a bit overshadowed by their familiarity from subsequent decades of stardom. Plus we've had lots of films about the Vietnam War since, and of course the violence is no longer very shocking.
But "The Deer Hunter" has other problems now--problems it always had, I guess, but which weren't so apparent at the time. The screenplay has scope, yes, but the storytelling just kind of lurches from one incident to another with little connective thread, transitional material or real character development, and the dialogue often sounds improvised, as in kinda-feeble. (Cimino is on the record as saying he told Streep she could improvise dialogue, because in the script her character was basically a complete blank.) There are huge setpieces yet almost no transitions between them,
The whole "Russian Roulette" thing is problematic not just because it's a gross distortion historically, but because even as a fictive leap of the imagination, it fails-first it's just part of the movie's one-note portrayal of the Viet Cong as monsters, then it's a ludicrous underground civilian pastime that one character even more ludicrously makes his "living" at. (Really? That would go on for months? Years? How long can anyone's luck hold out?) The hunting sequences meant to lend some mythic dimension here are just heavy-handed and absurdly action-packed; did no one tell Cimino that 99% of such hunting is patient waiting? The scenes meant to be "everyday life"--notably that long, busy wedding party--are so overstuffed with forced joie de vivre and actorish "business," they now feel more mannered than "natural." (And yes, that definitely applies to the always-controversial "God Bless America," which the movie no longer has enough emotional potency to pass off as cathartic rather than a dramatic limb that shouldn't have been gone out on. I'm not a big fan of John Williams' often syrupy score, either--this film needs something edgier.) It's a bit sad that this is John Cazale's last movie, because his typical problem-causing-weakling character is almost completely extraneous here--he only gets in the way, to a degree where one wonders why any of other figures tolerate him.
It's an alternately pretentious and broad movie that nonetheless is visually very well-crafted and has some powerful scenes. It's a pity this director didn't have a slower rise to the top, because winning Best Picture etc. Clearly made him oblivious to his shortcomings (mostly in the realm of storytelling), which became catastrophically clear when he was given free rein with "Heaven's Gate." If that movie seems to have been considerably underrated, "The Deer Hunter" now looks greatly overrated. They're both impressively scaled, problematic, great-looking, mixed-bag films by a talented director who needed to be kept on a much shorter leash to maximize his strengths and minimize his self-indulgences, and who proved his own worst enemy in recovering from such a drastic reversal of fortunes.
"The Deer Hunter" remains an interesting film, very effective in individual elements if awfully disjointed as a whole. But it certainly would look a lot better now if it hadn't been greeted as a "masterpiece" in the first place. It can no longer live up to a reputation it may never have deserved, but which made sense in the cultural moment of its initial release. What impresses now is film's messy ambitiousness, not so much what it actually achieves. In that latter department, you'd have to say that the best movie Cimino ever made remains his first (and smallest), "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot."
But "The Deer Hunter" has other problems now--problems it always had, I guess, but which weren't so apparent at the time. The screenplay has scope, yes, but the storytelling just kind of lurches from one incident to another with little connective thread, transitional material or real character development, and the dialogue often sounds improvised, as in kinda-feeble. (Cimino is on the record as saying he told Streep she could improvise dialogue, because in the script her character was basically a complete blank.) There are huge setpieces yet almost no transitions between them,
The whole "Russian Roulette" thing is problematic not just because it's a gross distortion historically, but because even as a fictive leap of the imagination, it fails-first it's just part of the movie's one-note portrayal of the Viet Cong as monsters, then it's a ludicrous underground civilian pastime that one character even more ludicrously makes his "living" at. (Really? That would go on for months? Years? How long can anyone's luck hold out?) The hunting sequences meant to lend some mythic dimension here are just heavy-handed and absurdly action-packed; did no one tell Cimino that 99% of such hunting is patient waiting? The scenes meant to be "everyday life"--notably that long, busy wedding party--are so overstuffed with forced joie de vivre and actorish "business," they now feel more mannered than "natural." (And yes, that definitely applies to the always-controversial "God Bless America," which the movie no longer has enough emotional potency to pass off as cathartic rather than a dramatic limb that shouldn't have been gone out on. I'm not a big fan of John Williams' often syrupy score, either--this film needs something edgier.) It's a bit sad that this is John Cazale's last movie, because his typical problem-causing-weakling character is almost completely extraneous here--he only gets in the way, to a degree where one wonders why any of other figures tolerate him.
It's an alternately pretentious and broad movie that nonetheless is visually very well-crafted and has some powerful scenes. It's a pity this director didn't have a slower rise to the top, because winning Best Picture etc. Clearly made him oblivious to his shortcomings (mostly in the realm of storytelling), which became catastrophically clear when he was given free rein with "Heaven's Gate." If that movie seems to have been considerably underrated, "The Deer Hunter" now looks greatly overrated. They're both impressively scaled, problematic, great-looking, mixed-bag films by a talented director who needed to be kept on a much shorter leash to maximize his strengths and minimize his self-indulgences, and who proved his own worst enemy in recovering from such a drastic reversal of fortunes.
"The Deer Hunter" remains an interesting film, very effective in individual elements if awfully disjointed as a whole. But it certainly would look a lot better now if it hadn't been greeted as a "masterpiece" in the first place. It can no longer live up to a reputation it may never have deserved, but which made sense in the cultural moment of its initial release. What impresses now is film's messy ambitiousness, not so much what it actually achieves. In that latter department, you'd have to say that the best movie Cimino ever made remains his first (and smallest), "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot."