The pressure was clear, but the grace had vanished.
The leisurely and nearly stylised motions of the deer hunt now looked as archaic as Hemingway in a world of dirty violence. The guys were at war and captured and within reach of death. It was like playing poker with a veteran.Īnd then, wham! We were in Vietnam, up to our chins in foul, rat-infested water, in a cage made by the Vietcong, with Russian roulette as the game of choice. Another was the stealth with which Cimino seemed to be following a secret design. When the film opened, after about an hour audiences were asking: "Where is this picture going, and why are we waiting?" One reason why was the star power on screen. There's the wedding and then there's the scene where the guys drive off on a deer hunt in mountains that are only about 2,500 miles from the Pennsylvania steel town in which they live. We know three of the guys are going off to Vietnam in the morning, and they've had that confrontation with the bleak sergeant in the bar who surveys their energy and eagerness with pity or contempt. Yes, we have been introduced to the characters. What we have seen seems as long as a film already, without very much happening. One of the most daring delayed uses of action occurs in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. We have made it all the way to slow film, reverie, contemplation, duration and persistence, but they don't feel so good if you've ever had action. Drama on screen is movement, conflict, physicality – even if it's just the twitch of a lip. The notion of action presupposes that something has to happen. Then someone calls "Action!" They don't say "Go" or "Start". Everything is poised to go, without going.