One of the best war-movies ever

Rating: 10/10 (16 May 2001)

"The Deer Hunter" is in my opinion, one of the two best war-movies ever made ("The Thin Red Line" being the other). Both TDH and TTRL show war as something to really consider, to think about. TDH doesn't tell us much about what's happening during the war, as before and after the war. We get to see how the characters struggle to pretend that everything is as it used to be. (TTRL on the other hand doesn't tell us much about the fighting at Guadalcanal, but it puts the war into another perspective, contrasting the furious fighting with beautiful sceneries, very much alike the finnish writer Väinö Linna's "Unknown Soldier".)
This is what war-movies should be about, but mostly they're not. Mostly they're just dedications to "those who served and gave their lives for their countries", when what we really need to ask is why these countries keep asking us to kill for them. TDH is not celebrating the victims of the war, but remembering them and trying to tell us that we can't let this happen again. I don't see how people interpret the song "God Bless America" in the end as a patriotic stance. Isn't the grim irony obvious? When these people finally realizes what the war really was about, what else could they do beside putting their faith into that their sacrifices "for their country" weren't meaningless? What else could they do besides asking God to bless their country and eventually confirm that it was all necessary and for the best?
"The Deer Hunter" has it's flaws, but I've seen it at least ten times and still feel the tears well up in my eyes every time I see it. That's another reason why I wouldn't dream about giving this movie anything less than a ten.