From a longtime reader:

Dear Jonah,
I have to get my two cents in on The Deer Hunter. I didn’t see a link for John Podhoretz comments, so hopefully I’ll not miss some context, and you can feel free to forward my comments for his evisceration.
You are both right. Some background. The America depicted in the movie is where I grew up, almost literally. They could have shot the movie a mile from my house and it would have looked just about the same. The people too. I knew these people, and although my family tended more toward college educated and teachers I had many relatives and friends who worked in the mills and went to fight the wars. This movie really hit home for me and a lot of people from the rust belt area who were growing up at around that time. You need to understand that around the time the movie came out the mills in the area were teetering on the edge of collapse, some already had. Where I grew up it seemed like a whole way of life was ending around that time, and both mills and Vietnam played a part in that. Now, onto the debate.
John is right. These are people who never questioned the need to fight and win wars. They volunteered because it was the right thing to do. They left good union jobs at mills and wives and girlfriends to fight wars because their fathers and grandfathers had done the same, and because they believed in America and the need to defend the greatest nation on earth. They did their duty as best they could. They fought hard, they didn’t do drugs, kill civilians, frag officers, or rape pillage and burn, and they didn’t leave their buddies behind. When they came home they asked for nothing more than a good job at the mill, a wife and a few kids, a decent house, and a few years of relatively comfortable retirement to spoil the grandkids. Their lives centered around their families, their church the VFW or the KofC and the local watering hole where they met up with the guys from the mill. Come the Monday after Thanksgiving, they were out hunting. These people were the backbone of the American working classes, and it was they and their fathers who built post war America into the greatest nation on earth. They were also all union, and all voted Democrat, but that was when Democrat still meant JFK and Scoop Jackson as opposed to Nancy Pelosi. (Actually a lot of them probably voted for Nixon, but they didn’t want to talk about it.)
You are right. The Deer Hunter is a tough movie for me to watch for a number of reasons, among them are some you touch on. The characters are not one dimensional, almost all are really well done but they are for the most part depicted as stuck, and unaware that they are stuck, in a meaningless lower class existence where they can expect nothing but more of the same. Their lives are depicted as drab meaningless repetition where the only escape is getting drunk at a wedding, an occasional hunting trip, or a war. The only characters who seem to be searching for or reaching for something more are DeNiro and Streep. You see signs that the others might have had something, the bartender likes to play piano (but you know he’ll always be a bartender) is one example that comes to mind. DeNiro’s character seems to have a philosophical bent and be meant for something better, but you never get to see him moving in any meaningful way towards anything else. The American dream is portrayed as a dying institution. The portrayal of the Vietnam war is standard liberal fare. Useless, wasteful and futile. The men who returned came back in one of three ways, dead, maimed, or disillusioned and unsure how to fit back in. Just for the extra bonus they threw in the mentally damaged drugged up vet too, but he was still in Vietnam, and eventually came home dead. The point was made nonetheless.
In short (although I think I’m well past that point) the movie sympathetically and realistically portrayed people who were patriotic and believed in the American dream, but it left no doubt at the end that the dream was dead.

Update: I liked this one:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,
You may be tired by now of getting email about the movie, but these are my two cents:
In his book “Stolen Valor” B.G. Burkett makes the case that movies in the 70s and 80s helped to shape the public perception that ALL Vietnam vets were crazy nut cases, deeply affected by PTSD. This led to many cases of fake vets seeking benefits that they didn’t earn and people being wary of Vietnam veterans in general. Although he specifically mentions the Rambo movies as the main culprit (and Born on the 4th of July, if I’m not mistaken), it can be argued, I believe, that The Deer Hunter did its little part. It is probably the case that more veterans were affected by the Vietnam war than by other wars before or since, but the heroics in the movie are probably less remembered than the crazy guy playing compulsively Russian roulette in the dark neighborhoods of decadent Saigon. This does not make The Deer Hunter a left leaning movie. I think, with Podhoretz, that it has a confused view of the war. However, since it plays the victims’ interpretation of the war louder than the heroic view of the war, it is now, if not in 1979, humming the tune that the left likes to hear.

Update II: I like this one too:

Jonah,
I was in the army when The Deer Hunter was released. In fact, I was in uniform, during a long layover when I first saw it. Following the cast singing “God Bless America” at the conclusion, while leaving the theater, I was approached by a couple (both of whom had been crying) who wanted to apologize for how they had treated soldiers during the Vietnam War. I was stunned. I am convinced, that this movie, more than any other event, was the pivot point for the general publics recognition of what our soldiers and marines went through, and how they were doing what they thought was the right thing. The all negative, all the time view of the military and the Vietnam War started to change, and of course, Ronald the Great only amplified this trend.