Our Academy Award "Best Picture" quest is getting squirrelier as we move into more modern times. (Okay, so the 70s isn't exactly modern, I know.) We were married but without kids when The Deer Hunter came out, and so might have actually seen it in the theater, but we didn't. Now I know why. We did see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during that time, and I was haunted and depressed for weeks. I'm a little more hardened now, I guess, or better at thinking of other things, or, more likely, too busy to be able to afford giving it much thought, but this one would have had the same effect. I guess I can understand why someone would make a depressing move, but why anyone would want to watch one is beyond me. It's not that there weren't some redeeming features about it—but not enough to induce me to see it again, or recommend it.
The director did state that he wasn't particularly interested in historical accuracy—to me a fatal flaw if you're going to have a historical setting—but he could at least have gotten the mountains right. Substituting a steel town in Ohio for one in the Pittsburgh area is one thing, and Thailand can do in a pinch for Vietnam, but using the Cascade Mountains in Washington to portray Western Pennsylvania?Um... I think I was thinking of The Deerslayer. Not the same.
That's what I originally thought, too. A disappointment, to say the least.
This morning I found someone else's comments on The Deer Hunter, which I think worth linking to: Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Deer Hunter: Story versus Context.
