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Comment by whoooooo123 | Hacker News Reader

The Deer Hunter is also a great example of how movies have changed. I enjoyed the movie but it's just sooooooooo.... daamn.... slooooooooow. Nothing happens for the first hour. That doesn't make it bad, but it goes to show - audiences in 1978 must have had very long attention spans. I can't imagine such a glacially slow movie being a hit if it came out today, when the average person can't pay attention to anything longer than a TikTok video (and even that needs to be played on double speed.)

People's brains have changed.

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It isn't that movies like The Deer Hunter are slow, necessarily. It's that the scenes are doing things other than advancing "the plot". Things like revealing a hidden character trait or depicting the quality of the protagonist's world. I remember someone telling me that The Zero Effect (1997) was "too slow", when I thought it was moving along at a fast clip; I finally realized it was the difference in what we were getting out of (or looking to get out of) the movie that accounted for our differing perceptions.

Not that that can't be done poorly, either. But The Deer Hunter never struck me as slow, and I'm a kid who grew up with Star Wars as my template. But I got really into what we might call (erroneously) "character-driven" movies in the '80s.

(Dammit, I liked Chariots of Fire, but there was no way it should have taken Best Picture over Reds. Same with Ordinary People and Raging Bull.)

I think The Deer Hunter hits a lot harder for folks that lived through the Vietnam war. My dad (a boomer who was in his 20s during the war) connected deeply with the film because it portrayed what was really happening to people in that time. The movie wouldn't have been nearly as powerful or impacting if it just cut straight to the Vietnam and capture scenes, you need the first act to establish the deep and real friendship of the folks going to war. You see their life before the war and how amazing and perfect it is--how it could be your life. And then you see the horror of the war and how it completely fractures and destroys this group of friends. A lot of people that lived through the war experienced the same kind of shock and the film is quite cathartic for them.

If you just want a Vietnam war movie that cuts right to the gory chase about the horror of conflict, watch Platoon. If you want to experience what life was like for a young adult in their 20s and 30s being drafted or going to fight in the war and its impact on their life, watch The Deer Hunter.

And people's brains continue to change.

When I was in my mid-20's, I rented Jaws and couldn't believe how boring it was. Twenty years later I gave it another go when I saw it on some streaming service and I absolutely loved it.

On one hand, people love short videos but at the same time many of them will settle in for a multi-hour podcast or binge-watch six hours of some streaming series on a slack weekend.

Glacially slow, a lot of existential brooding and inner conflict. Curious if Godard was never considered to direct 'Dune', seems like his sort of thing, he might have done a good job.

What, you can't spend an hour just watching someone else's creation? Your leisure free time's too important? You gotta quick-flick-swipe through endless new distractions on the web? C'mon. Just watch an old film. Once can't hurt. Don't apply the modern bullshit standards to the past.

Alphaville. Worth a watch. Not everything has to be what you expect. Be confused. Be challenged. At least then you know someone's not making it trying to push your buttons and manipulate you. Maybe you just need to get in the moment.

There's more entropy and information in something unexpected. And how is there not something unexpected to find, something new, in even the slowest oldest film? Just watch it with focused awareness. The quality of your attention determines the quality of your experience. :P ;) xx ;p

There's a difference between someone's personal experience/capabilities and making observations about the broader cultural appeal of a thing.

I can still put in the personal effort to read Charlotte Bronte or watch North By Northwest and take on the appropriate context required to understand that these are landmark works for their era, while simultaneously understanding that they have limited appeal to a general modern audience.

I object to your tone, and I don't understand why you're taking it with me, or wrongly assuming that I didn't see 'The Deer Hunter'; I did see it. I had heard rave reviews about 'The Deer Hunter' but as things happen, I only got around to seeing it ~15yrs after it was released. It was decent, De Niro and Cazale are standouts, but not as great as the accolades it had been showered with. I like most De Niro (Scorsese, Cimino, or other director), but for a slow-boiler character study of a man's descent into insanity, 'Taxi Driver' (or the little-known but superb Danish film trilogy 'Pusher' (1996-2004-2005)) are IMO far superior. Or maybe even Takeshi Kitano. As far as TDH goes, I think the last chapter suffers a break in coherence, and it doesn't advance the narrative to see De Niro unravel in slow-motion at the end. As far as anti-Vietnam war films go, Bogdanovich's 'Saint Jack' made the point more deftly; we don't necessarily need to see people literally blowing their brains out to get the point that they've been systematically dehumanized. Perhaps it's the Oscar hype machine rather than Cimino's directing that's responsible for the perpetual hype around 'The Deer Hunter', and the lack of hype around Nicolas Winding Refn. In any fair universe, foreign directors like Refn would have won an Oscar for his early work, regardless that it was in Danish; which is a Hollywood attitude that persisted until 'Parasite' (2019).

Be assured I've "watched old films" aplenty. (I referenced 'Alphaville' above, earlier; and the David Lynch 'Dune'. I was even gong to reference Tarkovsky). My comment wondering if Godard was ever considered to direct 'Dune' is obviously praise for his work.

Have you seen Pusher Trilogy? or Bogdanovich's 'Saint Jack'? How do you think they compare?

(Also, 'The Deer Hunter' running time is 3h3m, so the "you can't spend an hour just watching someone else's creation" misassumption is offbase for multiple reasons. Ask questions, rather than make wrong assumptions.)

I'm sorry I wasn't directing it at you. It was more just a response to the gestalt of the thread.

I'm sorry I put it under your comment... I wish it was just sort of like taking turns in a conversation with a group of people... But with text and threads, I don't really know where to throw this in...i don't think there was any one comment that I could sort of respond to, it wasn't just one thread, it was vibe from multiple thread.

I guess if we'd been having a conversation and we're next to other people who were talking and I'd said that I probably would have expected you to take it in the sense that I was responding to something that someone else said but it was something that you could appreciate.

I like film, but I'm not a film nut. Thank you for the recommendations

Ask questions, rather than make wrong assumptions

I totally agree with that, and see this all the time. Again I wasn't responding to you, I think there are some people in the thread who what I said could totally apply to though. I guess I just expected you were someone who could appreciate that :) ;p xx :p

Apology accepted! Please take care in threaded discussions who remarks appear to be directed to, also I tend to not make assumptions, rather to ask questions. You could have preambled "This remark isn't directed at you, but the thread audience in general seems to be unfamiliar with..." Use @name to reference people's comments by name.

It's definitely slow, but I don't know what else could draw you into the social intimacy that's dissolved with devastating emotions engagement later in the film. There's a tolerance and intimacy established in the first scenes that I believe fuels the culmination of disassociation in self destruction, despair and rage in the numerous infamous scenes I'm uncertain could have had as much impact otherwise. Another theme may arguably be counterpoint between tolerance or understanding of mediocrity and individual desires for inestimable even incomprehensible realization both in terms of ff everything (the simplest contemporary expression become inseparable from New generation post Viet Nam national identity, and seeking private assessment when all meaningful references are lost. These are only some is a frequent contemporary messages conveyed by making seventies filmmakers reflecting a crumbling human infrastructure. It's possible to imagine the contemporary viewer, as I once could, appreciating the establishing scenes as something other than vicarious observation and more akin to a negotiation of sympathy and even solace. Today, I find the same extraordinary and beautified scenes, Cimino foreshadowing Heavens's Gate hubris had the winter location grass and trees decorated with green paint and faux foliage only for color balance, frustrating. We're ostensibly living in economic good times in unremitting contrast, and yet so little seems to have changed. I'm eagerly looking forward to viewing the moment I can discard my present perspective.

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