The Deer Hunter

 Am I imagining it?  Am I simply displacing my own thoughts and experiences onto the work that I just witnessed?  Let us examine the facts.

Various synopses of the movie state that both Nick and Michael were in love with Linda.  I can find no evidence for this in the film itself, however.  Nick's engagement to Linda is definitely not a romance, but rather an offhanded suggestion.  Michael can barely be bothered to touch her, though she is gorgeous, fun, and obviously in love with both of them.  

Nick and Michael live together, and Michael says that he doesn't want anyone but Nick--albeit in the context of hunting.  

Stan says that he has repeatedly fixed Michael up with women, but that nothing has ever happened, whereupon he accuses him of being a faggot.

The gazes that the two share are too many to enumerate, and every other relationship in the movie is flat and sterile, if mentioned at all.

Michael suddenly strips off all his clothes and runs naked through the streets with Nick chasing him?  WTF?

As Nick dies, Michael declares his love in a way that could be homosocial, but at this point that is more of a stretch than the other conclusion.  I feel like I am trapped in an alternate reality where I even have to make this case.  The opposite should be true. Ink should be spilled by those who wish to see the relationship as platonic, brotherly love, not the other way around. On top of which, we can layer writer and director Cimino's life as a confirmed old bachelor with no record that I could find of relationships hetero or otherwise, and a super gay presentation.  One could argue that it is just how a Hollywood director presents himself, but nuh-uh.  Not the straight ones.  Have you seen how they look?

It's all speculation, of course, and furthermore irrelevant.  The movie was good, if flawed, and it means to people whatever it means to them.  I am reminded of other times, however, that there was something in a work that I felt insane for seeing: Mrs. Dalloway, for one.  That book was gay as fuck, and only later did I learn that Virgnia Woolfe was an initiated Sapphist.  Maybe this will be another example and I'll get to be, if not right, at least sane.