the deer hunter (1978). directed by micheal cimino.

i am going to say it again. i love war/anti-war movies. and this one has got to be on top of the list of my favorite anti-war movies alongside grave of the fireflies (1988), the thin red line (1998) and apocalypse now (1979), to name a few. the theme of war is rich with emotions, characters, events, action sequences, motivations and effects. only an unimaginative writer/director would make a war movie devoid of all these elements and choose to show explosions and shootings. war, is definitely more than that. it goes beyond power hungry and stupid politicians and conquering nations - it's about people who often have no idea why they are fighting the other side and are forced to put their lives by mere chance of bullets; it is about the people who were left behind in their hope, grief and loneliness that their loved ones would come back alive someday and it is about wrecking the lives of people they are fighting with. 

it is most often about the senselessness of fighting strangers we have no problem with in the first place. in this universe, where humanity is at its lowest point. 

the deer hunter is about a group of friends who volunteered to fight in vietnam in order to escape their monotonous lives in a small factory town. little did they know that the fight in vietnam is real and bloody, and in their attempt to escape hell, not all of them get out of the war in one piece - robert de niro the hunter who insisted to his hunting buddies that the one shot is all that matters to kill a deer gets a a dose of his own medicine when he is being hunted in the vietnam jungle, john savage who played steven the new groom went home with his legs missing and a broken man; unable to face his bride. the saddest of all is nick, played by the then 35 years old very handsome christopher walken (before he looked scary, yes the guy possessed teutonic good looks in his youth), who is the kindest and most considerate of the bunch mentally crumbled in the horrors of war. 

films like these are sad. i wept at the loss of lives for no good reason, of men returning from the battle field less than a human being. micheal cimino's direction is emotionally taxing, superbly captures the horrors of war through the eyes of the common men who have no idea what a war actually consists of.

where is justice and sense of sending these young people to their deaths, well before their time?