Stone’s genuine pursuit of validity, however, does not mean the film has an absence of myths. Though the subject is the Vietnam war, Stone focuses his motion picture more on the enemy within the U.S. troops. The movie unfolds through the eyes of twenty-one year old Chris Taylor as the troops split into two factions. To define these factions, Stone manipulates common stereotypes of U.S. soldiers while fighting in the conflict. One side consists of the “heads,” whose sole goal is to survive and use drugs, while the other consists of the “juicers,” energetic and ruthless killers who dismiss the other as drug addicts, with the black soldiers somewhere in between the divisions. To personify these myths, Stone creates two sergeants, Barnes, who symbolize the nihilistic killer and Elias, who represents the “heads,” both of whom frequently conflict with eachother over Chris. Through their conflicts, Stone explores many issues that American troops faced in Vietnam: the climate, skill of the enemy, relationships with civilians, racial division, drugs, and lack of confidence in ranking officers. Commenting on his characters, Stone calls Barnes and Elias, “Two Gods. Two different views of the war. The Angry Achilles Versus the conscious-stricken Hector” who “mirror the very civil war that I’d witnessed in all the units I was in.”

As The Deer Hunter progresses, the story focuses on the disillusioned and shattered communities the three men face. After being taken prisoners, the three friends are forced to play in a Russian roulette sequence where the captors bet on the outcome. These primary Vietnam scenes are total fabrications backed by no documented evidence; few, if any, Vietnamese participated in Russian roulette matches. Cimino’s point is not historical or political, but moral and dramatic. This gut-wrenching scene of American soldiers fighting for their lives through the perverted ideals of the savages illustrates the removal of the historical context of the war for the creation of a scene that powerfully plays on the viewers’ emotions. Cimino’s film relies on another myth; the racist stereotypes of the enemies. Cimino gives the Vietnamese two roles in the movie; they are either savages participating in Russian roulette matches or refugees fleeing the country. Cimino offers the people no sympathy or history. By stereotyping the Vietnamese characters as merely savage anti-American enemies and removing the story of the Vietnamese struggle, Cimino, in effect, de-contextualizes the history of the Vietnamese people.

Perhaps the best example of a Vietnam War film that utilizes myths to enhance the story is Michael Cimino’s 1978 release, The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro. Deemed by Jack Kroll as the first film to “look at Vietnam not politically, but as the manifestation of an endemic murderousness,” the film opens with an hour of the three characters in their Slavic-American community of Clairton, Pennsylvania. Cimino puts great effort into emphasizing deep ties between the three lead characters, Michael, Nick, and Steven, through their work in front of the blast furnace, their after hours at the neighborhood bar, and, especially, their hunting in the mountain peaks for bucks. In particular, Cimino went to great lengths to create the central, mythical image of the “one-shot kill,” not to re-create historical reality, but to obtain the proper appearance and feel for his myths. First, the hunting scenes were shot, not in the smaller and older Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, but in the superior Cascades of Washington. In fact, when the deer proved to be too small for the director, Cimino airlifted in larger animals from a New Jersey preserve because myths deals with expectations rather than reality.

The image of the “one-shot kill” represents a purifying and defining moment in the frontier of the characters’ lives. Later in the film, this idea will be evident in the Viet Cong�

Some topics in this essay:
Vietnam War, Fourth July, Deer Hunter, Ron Kovic, Chris Taylor, Cimino Vietnamese, Green Berets, Elias Barnes, McPherson Princeton, Viet Cong, vietnam war, green berets, noble-grunt films, deer hunter, vietnam veteran, russian roulette, war films, born fourth july, born fourth, fourth july, viewers’ emotions, vietnam war film, watching noble-grunt films, historical context war, vietnam war films,