Genuine Human Responses Abundant in The Deer Hunter

Bobby, there are other ways to deal with your bad hair

 W  as our world better in 1978 than it is today? Judging from the unbelievable advances in telecommunications in the last 37 years, it should be. As children, we learn early on how to get away with and say things we don't mean.

While riding in the back of a school bus, we are quick to make rude gestures to car drivers behind us because we know there won't be any repercussions. As we age, we learn how to get through mundane days at work via banal conversations about the weather, sports or current events with our colleagues, even though we are not making direct eye contact with each other. 

Our latest piece of equipment, besides the University degrees we think will propel us to a level of importance worthy of an expensive house, is the Apple Watch. As if we need another reason to get neck torticollis from looking down at a screen pretending to exist in a world that is becoming more and more fake by the minute. 

Today's movies are by and large fake representations of ourselves and it makes one wonder, when will we be able to be replaced by CGI and not have to step out of the house at all? Like a slap in the face and a wake up call from Hell all wrapped up into one three-hour extravaganza, our society is crying out loud for a viewing of The Deer Hunter.

Filmed by a hand that understood genuine human emotion, The Deer Hunter begins by showing the viewer what small-town America was once about. 

Each of its characters are hard-working, lower-class purists and don't seem to mind if they have to kick the trunk of a car do get it open or put tires on the roof of a shack-like house to keep its ramshackled roof from flying off. 

They work hard, play hard and love being together. Their conversations with one another, although unsophisticated, are heartfelt and genuine. They love their town and their town loves them. 

Shot by award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, The Deer Hunter's hunting scenes are a sample of raw, breathtaking beauty that soon become a beacon of light in a film that at times looks even darker than Blade Runner.

After three of its main characters go off to Vietnam following a beautifully put-together wedding scene that exposes a small Pennsylvania town as a place that anyone with a heart would want to be a part of, The Deer Hunter then explores just how we humans deal with immeasurable stress in a way no Vietnam film has ever done. 

The torture scenes are so inhumane that they are difficult to watch, even by today's standards but, the film's director Michael Cimino never loses sight of the theme of this movie: the beauty of the human condition. 

We seek love and companionship and when pushed, we push back. 

In the face of danger, we break down and count on each other to bring us back up. We know how to sing and music brings us together even in the face of inexplicable horror. We never give up even though we might become scarred, stuttering shadows of our former selves.

The Deer Hunter is pure, it is raw and it is an emotional trainride to Hell and back, but, it is just what this world needs as we become more and more distant from each other, with small screens quickly surpassing what makes us so special.