Russian Roulette

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2010)

I am responding to the first prompt, regarding the motif of the Russian Roulette. In The Deer Hunter it serves as a precise and powerful metaphor for the lives of soldiers involved in the war. Everything in the Vietnam War had a degree of randomness to it; even the draft system relied for awhile on birthdays drawn like a lottery. The idea that the men had no choice but to play the Russian Roulette symbolized how they had to fight even if they didn't agree with it. They had to put their lives into the hands of fate with no obvious cause.
In the first Russian Roulette sequence, when Mike has to encourage Steve to pull the trigger, even though he knows it might kill his friend, he exemplifies the part the government played in sending young soldiers over to fight, with no guarantee of their success. This system appears to be set in stone, but the way Mike and Nick manage to escape seems to give the impression that the rules are all imaginary, and no one is playing by them. In order to maintain their own survival, they change the game, and use the put themselves in more danger in order to kill their captors and escape. The rules can be broken in the name of survival, and in that way the Vietnam War was gorilla warfare, with every man for himself. The loyalty soldiers were expected to give their country is directly symbolized in the Russian Roulette. Patriotism meant putting their lives up to chance.
The most powerful scene in the movie, and perhaps in any movie I've seen, was the final Roulette scene with Mike and Nick. It showed how brainwashed Nick had become on account of the war. Even though he could leave, he was so psychologically changed by the system of the war that he could not regain control of his life. He instead left his survival in the hands of fate, and lost the game of chance he had been playing all along.