The Deer Hunter

There are many films about the Vietnam war – but The Deer Hunter holds a very special place. Michael Cimino’s movie, which was awarded five Oscars, is not only an exceptionally profound vivisection of the devastation that the experience of war leaves in the human psyche, but also a metaphorical expression of the irrevocable end of the American dream. The film connects intimate realism and epic scope while telling the story of three friends – Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) – from a small town in Pennsylvania. Their tranquil life changes completely when they go to war. They are confronted with the conflict’s brutality and its moral consequences which become a limit experience that shatters the old order and bonds which held them together as well as the very foundation of their identity. A formidable, moving film, interestingly different from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, also shown this year at the Tauron American Film Festival.