The Deer Hunter Film Analysis

Vietnam War films explore a wide range of aspects. Films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket focus primarily on the military and warfare aspects of the Vietnam conflict. The Deer Hunter, directed by Michael Cimino, concerns conventional domestic life in the United States during the war, and the impact serving in the war had on men who returned to conventional life after enduring extraordinary horrors. The film has become a critical and commercial success, celebrated for its, “tender – and even optimistic – depiction of the human capacity to endure,” (“After 36 years, The Deer Hunter remains one of the most fascinating films on Vietnam”). It even managed to win five of the nine Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture and Best Director, which really put Cimino in the limelight. However, for all its successes, it certainly has some downsides. In order to understand the film’s successes and failures, one must explored the most important focal points of The Deer Hunter, and examine said points with the utmost scrutiny.
The Deer Hunter has a very focused narrative in terms of its sparing usage of the Vietnam setting. The film primarily documents the lives of small town Pennsylvanians Michael (Robert De …show more content…
Hints of its impact on Vietnam War fiction can still be seen today, an example being the Russian roulette segment in the 2010 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops ("Some of Treyarch 's "film References" in Their CoD Titles"). The characters and film drama are more celebrated, but, the historical inaccuracy of the film has been explored and questioned by many today. The Deer Hunter is a film engrossed in a romanticized version of the Vietnam War, and Cimino’s own imaginative alterations. Hopefully others will continue to view it critically, and examine the context in which the film was