The Deer Hunter is a highly intense war film. The movie mainly focuses on the mental torture every soldier went through. It shows the horror these men found within themselves when returning to their home lives.
A strong theme found in this film is the idea of mental suffering through unbelievable amounts of torture at war. The soldier's in this film are captured by the Vietnamese and were forced to play "Russian Roulette" with a loaded gun. The men's options were either play or drown in the rat-infested river. This torment destroyed the men mentally. The few who actually survived in this situation were mentally disturbed for the rest of their lives. Being a prisoner of war in my eyes, is possibly one of the worst things that can happen to someone in war. Whether you die in the enemy camp or are tortured to your mind's end, you are ruined either way. .
This film also focuses on the soldier's family life before and after going to war. These men all had friends and family who cared for them and loved them. They were great friends and planned to be this way forever. After the war, the hometown, family and friends were all the same, yet the soldiers who went to Vietnam were very different. These men were destroyed mentally from all that they have seen and gone through. Because of the war, it was not the same when they returned and it will never be the same because of all the emotional distress each soldier went through. .
I believe this was an anti-war film. To see what these soldiers went through, made me ask myself if what they were fighting for was worth it. I believe the answer is no. These men had the same lives as any of us, and to see them get ruined like that says that war is not right. From the Russian roulette scene, to watching them return to their family was difficult to watch. There's not much out there that justifies what they went through worth fighting for. Therefore, I believe it is an anti-war film.
