Blog 9- RR

The Deer Hunter is a coming home film about three friends, Mike, Nick, and Steve, who all experience the Vietnam War first hand. The movie is organized into three parts. The first part is when the friends are heading to war. Steve gets married a few days before they are shipped out, and the small mining town in which they live are congratulating them for going to war. Mike, Nick, and Steve are proud to go to war, as are their families, and they are given a hero's goodbye, not fully understanding what they are getting themselves into. There is one part in the film where they are at the wedding and a green beret sat down at the bar. The guys started to ask him questions about the war, and all he could say was "fuck it." This shows the reality of the war, and the way people who have been to the war felt afterward.

The second part of the film takes place in Vietnam, when the friends are at war. One of the first scenes that the second part emphasizes is the Russian Roulette that the guys are forced to play by the north Vietnamese soldiers, which foreshadows the rest of the movie, and ultimately is the reason for its end. The friends' attitudes are changing drastically at this point in the movie, and they no longer seem to be proud to serve their country.

The third part of the movie takes place right around the end of the Vietnam war. Steve had lost his legs, Mike got to return home, but Nick stayed in Vietnam. Nick had gone AWOL during the war, and had found a passion for the adrenaline rush and the lucrative earning opportunities found with Russian Roulette. This eventually ends his life when Mike travels back to Vietnam to play one last game, and Nick shoots himself. Mike had tried to convince him to come home and get out of the hell that they know as Vietnam, and Nick didn't even seem to recognize him. This shows the huge transformation that can happen to people once they've experienced something as horrible as war.

The "one shot" symbol throughout the movie was quite powerful. At first, Mike talks about the one shot when he is hunting deer, and how you only have one shot when hunting. It continues on as a symbol during the Russian roulette scenes as someone playing Russian Roulette only has one chance with the one shot. The overarching symbol for one shot, though, is the one shot at life one has. Mike and Steve realized this after leaving Vietnam. Unfortunately Nick did not, and his one shot ended his life.

This film is definitely an anti-war film. It shows how people can become brainwashed into thinking that doing something for one's country is the right thing to do, regardless of what is involved. Then, after experiencing it, they realize how awful what they were involved with was. It shows the devastation that war can have on the soldiers, the family of the soldiers, and everyone who's surrounded them in their lives, and what a terrible toll it can take on them. The film shows how much war changes people, their personalities, and the rest of their lives after the fact.