It might be said … that Michael Cimino, who wrote and directed The Deer Hunter, had chosen an off-beat locale for the part of his film set in America. But what of his treatment of Vietnam? Naturally it can and has been argued that The Deer Hunter is not a film about Vietnam, and that those parts portraying the war (less than a third of the three-hour total) were introduced only to show how this experience marked three young Americans. After all, to invent a grand comparison, the battle scenes in War and Peace are of interest not in themselves but in the way they affect Prince André and Pierre.

But the Vietnam war was much more than just a series of battles…. Vietnam, both during and after the war, has been too unpleasant for most Americans to contemplate, which is why it has so far failed to produce...