It's OK to cut scenes!

Rating: 6/10 (19 July 2005)

I am a huge fan of both Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, so I have wanted to watch this film for quite some time. De Niro's and Walken's performances are outstanding, and Walken most definitely deserved his Oscar for it. My issue is with the director.
I noticed the slow pacing within the first five to ten minutes. I have nothing inherently against slow pacing (I also am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan), so I am not completely a victim of the MTV, attention deficit crowd, but surely there must be a line. However, I continued watching. I watched as the characters prepared for a wedding. I watched as they had the wedding. I watched the wedding reception. All of these events, taking place, I assume, over the course of a week or two, seemed, in my mind, to unfold in real time.
There then came a scene with the characters hunting deer. When Robert De Niro's character raised his rifle at a deer, and the deer ran away, and he lowered his rifle, I became convinced that the director was determined to capture a deer hunting expedition with such realism and accuracy that I myself wanted to fall asleep behind a deer blind. Or else perhaps take the role of the deer itself, who seemed to have the most exciting part, and was put out of its misery before the boredom became intolerable.
When the film finally got around to showing Vietnam, I was overjoyed, thinking that perhaps something would happen other than people sitting around, smoking, drinking, and talking over one another. I never was a fan of King of the Hill, and I certainly don't want to watch the movie version. And relatively speaking, the Vietnam scenes WERE more exciting. Although, disillusioned from the first hour, I nearly had the overwhelming urge to play Russian Roulette myself. But still, the moments of action in the Vietnam portion of the film were sparse, and liberally cushioned by long moments of silence, the likes of which would make Samuel Beckett hit "Stop." After two hours, I became distinctly aware of the rising coldness in my stomach that indicated it would not be getting better. Already I had almost completely taken my attention from the movie to more action-packed distractions like reading a book, or clipping my toenails.
I had not heard of the director, Michael Cimino, before The Deer Hunter, and having seen it, I'm not sure I will be rushing to the video store any time soon to watch any of his other work. Although I am not a professional filmmaker, and he is, I can give this much advice: it's OK to cut things out of your movie. I know, you are quite convinced that everything you left in was absolutely essential to the artistic success of the film, but you don't NECESSARILY have to show a hunter preparing to shoot a deer, only to find the deer run away. This is not something vital to the integrity of the picture. It's OK to remove that. It's not entirely necessary to show every dance that the wedding guests go through. You can cut a couple of them out.
I have nothing against movies with slow pacing. It's not the pacing that I have a problem with. I don't need constant action, just substance. There is a difference between lack of action and lack of substance. You can have a perfectly substantial scene with zero action, and there is an alarming number of examples of movies that have plenty of action, but zero substance. This film had a lot of dead air, a lot of parts that had no action and no substance.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've thought about the film too much, and I need to take a nap.