A peculiar thing happened a few nights back, re-watching The Deer Hunter for the first time. When that film was released in late 1978, my wife and I had begun our life journey just eight months prior. It wasn't the first movie we saw together, but it was certainly one of our earliest.
I was absorbed in the first scene that Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep ever shared in a film and happened to glance at my wife as she was watching. Inexplicably, I flashed to how she looked sitting in the movie theatre next to me when we first saw The Deer Hunter. I then looked back up at the 1978 faces of DeNiro and Streep, very early in their enduring careers. Suddenly, my brain began unspooling scenes from some of the movies featuring De Niro and Streep that my wife and I have seen together over our forty-seven-year history. I waited for the film to end, opened my laptop, and perused their Wikipedia pages. Take a quick look and share with me a favorite film featuring one or the other of these gifted actors. I'll wait.
Robert De Niro filmography - Wikipedia
Meryl Streep on screen and stage - Wikipedia
Given that massive body of work, aren't you able to easily anchor at least one milestone from your own life to a DeNiro or Steep movie from the same year? What milestone? Which film? In the meanwhile, even though Bob and Meryl are not aware of it, it now feels to me like the four of us have been growing older together, separately, for quite some time. This is especially true when I think of all that has followed from that first time my wife and I saw The Deer Hunter.
p.s. Compared to many films from the same era, The Deer Hunter has held up remarkably well.
Hey Pat - A quick aside but I think this may be a person best of blog comments in a single sitting.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Deer Hunter - Wow!!! What a film. Saw it when it was first released and only once since then. Difficult to watch but one that you can't turn away from. And DeNiro and Streep !!!! Someone was definitely doing their job when they cast that film. Thanks for the links ... Always fun to look these things up.
Be Well ... And I'm all caught up - lol. Now I have to go restring a guitar ....
Be well,
Bob
Bob; This was DEFINITELY your "personal best"; thanks for all the time you spent commenting yesterday. BTW, there's never any need for you to "catch up". Any comment is appreciated.
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