by Fraser Orr

Created on: February 03, 2009

Neither "The Deer Hunter" nor "Apocalypse Now" seek to give an objective, documentary approach to the Vietnam war. it is clear that these films are both personal statements, and presentations of the war through the prism of each director's own understanding of the event. To view either as an historical document of the war would be a mistake, instead they are documents of perceptions of the war.

Coppola's objective with "Apocalypse Now" was to create a film about the insanity of Vietnam. Unintentionally, the production of his film began to mirror the insanity of the war he was portraying. The troubled production of Apocalypse Now is well-known. Terrible weather ruined the sets, actors and crew were on drugs all the time and director Francis Ford Coppola threatened suicide on numerous occasions. All of this is shown in the brilliant documentary "Hearts of Darkness".

The stoned, crazy mindset the director was in comes through in the style of the film. The idea that those in a war zone go insane can be understood from "Apocalypse Now", and Coppola attempts to give us "deep" messages about the nature of war through devices such as the opening "The End" and finale "slaughter" montages. But like Dennis Hopper's photojournalist character, the film is too scattered to give us any real insight into the issues Coppola is grappling with.

The Deer Hunter concerns itself less with abstract statements on the nature of war than the realities of lives of the soldiers themselves and those who surround them. In fact, very little of this three hour movie takes place in Vietnam. The lengthy hunting and wedding sequences that open the film work to give us an understanding of these characters and relationships, the soldiers are then irrevocably changed by the horrific scenes in Vietnam, which permeate the rest of the film as the characters try in vain to return to normalcy.

Michael Cimino's film does, like "Apocalypse", concern itself with the fractured mental state that befalls those who have experienced the horror of war. While the psychedelic visual style of "Apocalypse" attempted to convey the emotions of its characters, Cimino is content to light and shoot his scenes in a straightforward manner, allowing the expressive burden of the film to lie in the performances of his actors and the action that takes place. While Coppola tried to show his ideas artfully, Cimino sticks the nature of war in our face and forces us to deal with what we are being shown.

This is not to say "The Deer Hunter" is a realistic film, as it is notorious for the Vietnam scenes depicting Viet Cong soldiers forcing POWs to play Russian Roullette. While this in fact never took place, Cimino uses these scenes in order to let the horror of war truly be understood by his audience. Not only do we intellectually understand that "War is hell", we are emotionally disturbed by what we are forced to witness, bringing us closer to the actual experience of war and helping us understand why, in the later scenes, returning home is so difficult.

While both films deal in different ways and with differing levels of success with the Vietnam war, neither can be said to be a direct representation of what the war was actually like for those who experienced it. Coppola's film concerns itself with the craziness and excess of the war, Cimino's with the permanent change in psyche that befalls war veterans. We can learn more about Cimino or Coppola through these films than we could ever hope to learn about Vietnam.

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