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they both loved him like they loved no one

This kind of male relationship—struck up by necessity, solidified with a handshake, forged into friendship by hard days and wild nights on the road—seems almost as much a relic of the past in cinema as hitchhiking and hobo jungles. Maybe the intimacy of unlucky loners like this—inarticulate, moody, often unsympathetic—feels too small-fry for today’s big screen, too tough a nut to crack for audiences, too analog for a wired world of digital connections. This hardluck friendship at the heart of Scarecrow that may have underwhelmed audiences upon its release felt, to me—sitting alone that night at the New Beverly—nearly revelatory.

i will take good care of you

i will take good care of you

they both loved him like they loved no one

mike’s love is a given. everybody can see it. he’d walk through the burning streets of saigon for him, he flew 12,000 miles to get him back, etc etc.

linda is interesting because she spends the first part of the film seemingly torn between mike and nick. she’s dating (then engaged to) nick but she exchanges these longing glances with mike. still, she’s with nick—nick who holds her face carefully, lets her stay in his home, talks to her gently. linda loves him like she loves no one, because no one has treated her like that. the way she loves nick is unfamiliar because his kindness is unfamiliar to her

oftentimes, the women are written to teach the men something. while they get their own arcs and storylines, it’s still the men (their relationship, their personal developments) at the forefront. case in point: y tu mamá también, where luisa gets her own well-written story, but ultimately the film is centered around julio and tenoch’s coming of age

i think that’s what makes the deer hunter’s Bisexual Love Triangle work so well for me! linda is so full of her own depth, even with her admittedly small part in the film. she gets her own story: even her staying in their trailer is an act that pushes her story forward, a choice she makes to get away from her own haunted house. she’s not written to be something standing between mike and nick; if anything, it’s the ghost of nick that drives a wedge between her and mike.

running from knives and charging towards guns