Robert De Niro · 1978 · Signature Roles
The Deer Hunter asks its actors to carry an almost unbearable weight, and De Niro carries it by refusing to show the strain.
The Deer Hunter asks its actors to carry an almost unbearable weight, and De Niro carries it by refusing to show the strain. As Michael, a steelworker from a small Pennsylvania town, he is the steady center of a group of friends whose lives are shattered by Vietnam.
The film’s power comes from contrast: the long wedding celebration that opens it, full of beer and dancing and ordinary life, against the prison camp and the homecoming that follow. De Niro’s Michael moves through both with the same watchful quiet, and his restraint makes the film’s most harrowing scenes — the roulette sequences — feel more, not less, terrible.
Michael’s final act in the film is not heroic in the conventional sense. It is an act of loyalty, of going back for a friend when going back makes no sense. De Niro plays it without sentimentality, which is why it lands so hard.