Thirty Years Later

Rating: 9/10 (9 October 2008)

It's 30 years now since The Deer Hunter came out. On cable (uncut) today and this is the first time I've seen it in 20 years. What a difference time has made for me.
I grew up in McKeesport, about 20 mins. from Clairton (the setting of the film) is located, so I watched the beginning scenes and saw my life, my parents, their parents and so forth. In the late 70's, I was only third generation American  all four grandparents were immigrants. My great-uncles and uncles worked those steel mills. The women lived their lives to get married and have babies. The guys were a unit both from work and their fun times and the women were the same from their marriages and families.
Those men and women could have been all of us  any of us  and they were. In the mid 70's this country was torn up almost beyond recognition by the Vietnam War. Never before (to my knowledge) and thank God never since have the men who served this country been so vilified over the actions of those who never had to experience the consequences of their decisions.
These soldiers (used generically here) were spit on, cursed at, screamed at, and called "baby killers" after My Lai, in addition to things I will never even know. Yet they faced an enemy and a "cause" that ripples down still. They fought a people in which they could not tell friend from foe, in a language unknown to them, in a world unlike anything they could imagine, with weapons ranging from guerilla warfare to children wired as bombs.
This changed them. How could it not?
In fact, the above (with the exception of how returning service personnel are treated) describes what is happening today in Iraq. How depressing is that? There are comments regarding the mountains not being in Pennsylvania, that Russian Roulette was not played, that the wedding scene  a deeply bonding situation for friends, family, neighbors, i.e., LIFE, was too long  who bloody cares? It was a movie, not a documentary.
Back then was when we as a country (for my generation anyway) lost its innocence and realized that to many (too many) of our leaders, we were expendable.
And, by the way, when they sang God Bless America it wasn't for cheese, it was because back then and until then, we still BELIEVED. Since then we love our country but no longer with that innocence.