Newspaper Page Text
January / February, 1979
On Screen
Ampersand
The l)EER HUNTER. .um n| Robrn IV Niro,
John (Ij/iilr, John S<i\4gr, Christopher Walken,
Mrryl Slrrrp; written by Derir Washburn; story
by Michael Cimino & Washburn and Louis
Garhnkle & Quinn K. Redeker; directed by
('imino.
In many ways this is yet another American
buddy movie, full of inarticulate but sensitive
slobs who baclulap and drink a lot, but what
distinguishes The Deer Hunter from the rest of
the motley pack is the intensity of emotions,
underplayed but understood, provided by a
flawless cast. I think the Academy should
cancel its annual awards celebration this
year and just send all pertinent Oscars to The
Peer Hunter's creators. De Niro and Walken,
in particular, are awesome in what they bring
to their basically underwritten roles.
The film is about friendship and survival
and the relationship of the two at home and
at war. Three Pennsylvania steel work
ers— De Niro, Savage and Walken—enlist
in the Army in l%8; before leaving Savage is
married and the others, with pals Cazale,
George Dzund/.a and Chuck Aspergren. go
off on one last deer hunt. The wedding and
reception, in full Russian-immigrant splen
dor, take up about 4. r > wonderful minutes,
during w hich Walken proposes to Streep, she
accepts, and I)e Niro casts some intense
glances at her. In fact, the looks De Niro
directs at Streep are more longing, sexy and
sweet than many an explicit love scene.
The deer hunt is a bit heavy-handed in its
symbolism: the church choir from the wed
ding, no less. In >oms away in “heaven*’ as De
Niro stalks his buck and makes his one-shot
kill; apparently Cimino wanted to make sure
we understood that the hunt is An Allegory.
There are other jarring or frustrating mo
ments, as when De Niro, home from V’iel
Nam, mentions a wound that is never ex
plained; Savage's wife is a speechless zombie
in one scene, normal in her next. But these
are small carps for a film that is warm and
loving and utterly terrifying. The
contrast—and connection—between home
and distant war is so disturbing I marvel at
how returning vets ever adjust, even the
strong, silent self-reliant ones like De Niro’s
character, who almost single-handedly re
scues himself and his two friends from a
numbingly frightening Russian roulette
game staged by their Cong captors.
'The final scene, which usually sends audi
ences out of the theatre in silent introspec
tion. was at first distressing; I couldn’t im
agine people attending the funeral of a dear
friend killed in V'iet Nam and then sitting
down around a table singing "God Bless
America." But there is no irony or bitterness
implied, just sadness and the support of sur
viving friends; they never questioned the war
before they went, and perhaps they never
will, even though the terrible physical and
emotional effects will linger with them al
ways.
By the end of this three-hour (but never
dragging) masterpiece I cared about these
people as if I’d grown up with them; I some
times catch myself wondering how they’re
doing, and I ha\e to remind myself that it’s
only a movie. Judith S |m«
KlSt; OK THK. GYPSIES. starring Eric Roberts,
Sterling Hayden, Shelley Winters and Brooke
Shields written arid duet ted by Kratlk Pierson.
Here he is again: that street-wise, dark-
haired. lusty, excitable, charming Eastern
city boy — full of his subculture’s passionate,
life-loving ways, but seething and finally
exploding with inarticulate rage at the stupid
cruelty of almost everyone else around him.
You loved him in 7he Godfather, Mean Streets,
Saturday Sight Fever, and Blondbrothers—at
least somebody did—so no wonder he’s back.
Only, for variety's sake, he’s not Italian this
timr. He’s a gypsy, played by the heralded
new actor Eric Roberts, who looks, sounds
and pounds his fist against the wall pretty
much like all the other heralded new actors of
this star-hatching genre.
The gypsy angle is about the only thing
that distinguishes this movie from others of
its kind—except for its inferiority to the rest.
Gypsies is nothing more than a sort of poor
ethnic joke. Someone could and maybe
someday will make a film that conveys the
alternating color, darkness and humor of
America's gypsies, who contemptuously
hang onto their customs and delight in spit
ting on the 20th Century.
But Frank Pierson made this film. There
was once some hope that his career would
bloom into something interesting — though
he directed the last A Star Is Horn and commit
ted other minor crimes, be had previously
scripted Dog Day Afternoon. Gypsies, though,
crushes any hope for him; it was made with
slick, cold calculation and little else. The plot
was “suggested by" the 1974 non-fit tion hook
of the same title by Peter Maas (Serpico, 7he
Valathi Tapers). The characters and events
have been changed, omitted, added, roman
ticized and hyped-up to fit the GodJotherish
mold.*
The film's Dave Stcpanowicz (Roberts’
part) possesses all the good qualities of Steve
Tene (the lunik's protagonist) and few of his
faults. The fact that our hero in the book
financed most of his teenage years by being a
homosexual prostitute somehow gets left out.
Wonder why? lie remains, though, the reluc
tant chosen heir to his grandfather’s “royal"
title, still in conflict with his brutish father
over rights to that honor, with vague ambi
tions alnrut leading his people from larceny to
learning.
It’s all only mildly ludicrous until the
film's climactic convulsions. The events in
the book were unresolved, so Pierson wraps
things up with the bloody deaths of two char
acters. Both scenes are stunningly crass. One
copies the Mean Streets car crash scene almost
shot-for-shot, the other unnecessarily has our
hero made to look like a cold-blooded mur
derer (they could have at least given the other
guy a gun). “It's almost his time,” the ads
say. Oh great.
Tarry Atkinson
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