A story of America\u2019s loss of innocence writ large \u2013 and I mean really large \u2013 The Deer Hunter<\/em> is a work of such self-conscious, chest-thumping grandiosity that it\u2019s not difficult to see why the film has fallen out of favor in some circles. Yet it remains impossible to dismiss. There\u2019s something elemental about the movie\u2019s boys\u2019 adventure machismo, a primal force that overpowers Cimino\u2019s more regrettably cartoonish flourishes. A lot of it, I think, has to do with how the film begins. 68 minutes might sound like a ludicrously excessive amount of screen time for a prologue, yet we need to dwell on the day to day details. We need to be able to feel the fabric of these lives before it\u2019s so cruelly ripped away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cimino\u2019s name would come to be synonymous with excess. His very next film was Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/em>, which brought down an entire studio and symbolically drove a stake through the auteur-driven heyday of \u201870s cinema. The Deer Hunter<\/em> is every bit as excessive as the notorious four-hour Western that followed; it just happened to connect. It luxuriates in the wedding sequence, a triumph of production design shot almost like a documentary, following the actors through seemingly endless ad-libs and improvisations. Nothing feels staged for the benefit of the camera, save for the ominous foreshadowing of blood red wine dripping onto a white bridal gown. The rest feels overheard, caught on the fly, like when we keep catching De Niro\u2019s Michael sneaking too-long looks at his buddy\u2019s girl (Meryl Streep).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Streep famously didn\u2019t think much of the role, but took it anyway to spend time with her boyfriend, the great actor John Cazale, who was suffering from terminal cancer during the shoot. (It was to be his last film.) Cazale\u2019s in Fredo mode again as Stanley, the hapless, skirt-chasing loser of the crew who carries around a pistol to try and pretend he\u2019s a tough guy. Everything about him rubs De Niro\u2019s stoic Michael the wrong way. As written, Michael is a fairly ridiculous character \u2013 a soulful hunter-philosopher and embodiment of masculine virtue who just so happens to have the same first name as the filmmaker. Yet as played by De Niro, he\u2019s a man devoid of swagger, a prisoner of his principles. The Deer Hunter<\/em> isn\u2019t often mentioned among De Niro\u2019s best performances, as it contains none of his physical fireworks. But it should be. The character is all in his eyes, past the bushy beard he tries to hide behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walken\u2019s unique physicality has never been used to more delicate ends. One look at the graceful Nick on the dance floor, or even shaking his hips to the jukebox at the bar, and you know he\u2019s not going to come home okay. There\u2019s something ethereal about him, even child-like. We\u2019re emotionally invested enough in these characters to accept the absurdity of the underground Russian Roulette league, the invention of an earlier screenplay by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker from which Cimino and Washburn plucked their central metaphor. It\u2019s an idea too silly for a movie this serious, one that would be more at home in Cimino\u2019s script for the Dirty Harry<\/em> sequel Magnum Force<\/em> that he worked on with John Milius. But so powerful are the scenes and staging that you can\u2019t help but get swept up in the pulpy grandeur all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the heart of the film is not in Saigon, but at home. It\u2019s on the Main Street where the Russian Orthodox church\u2019s onion domes loom large over the local supermarket. It\u2019s in the greasy spoon diners and unassuming homes that other Hollywood films can\u2019t seem to show without an air of condescension. Maybe the most unsung performance in the picture is by Chuck Aspegren as the boys\u2019 bearish buddy Axel. A foreman for U.S. Steel, Aspegren was originally hired as a technical advisor, but Cimino and De Niro liked him so much they asked him to join the cast. He\u2019s effortlessly authentic, holding his own amid a roster of screen legends. Aspegren never acted again. But I like to think Axel is still out there somewhere, having a Rolling Rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Deer Hunter” is streaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/deer-hunter-1-1024x748.jpg\")
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