And I don’t mean huge in terms of the towering career stature of so many of its leads (though that is undeniable)… I mean there are legitimately a dozen characters in the main cast. Because we know these men intimately, we feel the trauma and dehumanization of their experiences in Vietnam all the more acutely. And the more specific it gets, fleshing out the authentic lives of our Vietnam-bound protagonists, the more universal (though admittedly very white) it somehow counter-intuitively becomes. The opening sequence plants us extremely firmly in a very specific place and time, amidst a very specific people group. Cimino communicates much in The Deer Hunter through furtive glances and unspoken longings. It’s all communicated, even as it takes a full hour of screen time, remarkably subtly. But who am I to question something like that? What’s absolutely unassailable is that the wedding sequence establishes our cast of characters, their interpersonal dynamics, their very specific cultural identity, their longings and desires. Is the fabled wedding sequence over which Cimino fought and bled to keep at its extended running time overlong? Probably.

We’re introduced to our Russian immigrant community in blue collar Pittsburgh through a wedding sequence so expansive in length it puts the Godfather wedding to shame. But none of that was inevitable, and the film underwent huge battles of will between the studio and Cimino in order to arrive in theaters as the 3 hour epic that it is. They also take up perhaps 20 minutes of the film’s three hour runtime.Ī five-time Oscar winner, including best picture and best director for Michael Cimino, as well as best supporting actor for Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter is undoubtedly highly decorated and deserving of its place on the American Film Institute’s list. The Russian roulette sequences of The Deer Hunter are iconic, and there’s no way around that. It’s shocking, heightened, and utilized to extreme effect… so that’s understandable. I suspect all that many remember about The Deer Hunter is the Russian roulette. I’m not sure what an 18 year old me took away from a film this awash in raw, exposed humanity… but all I really remembered was the Russian roulette. To my shame I’ve still not seen every film on that list, but I worked hard on it, and at some point I soaked in The Deer Hunter as a young man directly because of its inclusion in that list. Here were 100 of the greatest American films ever made, being published just as a burgeoning young cinephile worked his first real job at a locally owned video store. In 1998, the year of my high school graduation and a time before the internet dominated, the American Film Institute released its 100 Years… 100 Movies list.

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