feihong wrote:That's just silly. You've only seen the Deer Hunter, and you have the guy's number as a filmmaker? And for the record, I think you missed a great deal of what was going on in The Deer Hunter. It isn't just characters and plot. There's also the subtle, musical structure of the picture, the use of music to express the common feelings within a community, the complicated thematic material, the gentle sense of complicated feelings between people (between Streep and De Niro, for instance, or De Niro and Walken, or Streep and Walken, or De Niro and Savage). The pace of The Deer Hunter may seem deliberate to you, but it's remarkable to me how in so little a span of dramatic space Cimino is able to build a large community of people and create a sense of their hopes, their burdens, the places they have come from and the places they are inhabiting.
The same things come clear in Heaven's Gate. It's fairly clear from these films that Cimino does have great sensitivity with film (that is the quality I feel leaves his work for the most part after Heaven's Gate, and makes him seem a more common filmmaker--was it something that was forced on him, or did he lose whatever talent he had? I don't know). Back then, at least, he could place people in a place and have you understand so much about both place and people--he could invite you to imagine how things had come to be the way they were, which is not a skill that many filmmakers have in spades. Cimino's ego may be a sight to behold, and it may seem galling to some people, but there are ways in which it is justified, because he had so much more talent than so many filmmakers, and he covered such unique ground. I like to laugh at his ego, and I think it's hard to defend Year of the Dragon, The Sicilian or The Sunchaser as worthy of the guy who directed The Deer Hunter, but he did more in a few pictures than many directors have done in a whole, extensive oeuvre.
Fine, I may have jumped the gun in some respects.
However, I feel my point still stands that Ciminio's heavy-handiness does get in the way - and can in fact impede - on the natural life of a scene or a character or a story. I found that the best moments in
The Deer Hunter were when the scene was just playing itself without the need to fulfill story obligations, set up plot points or themes or make a point. When something has to fulfill the story, it comes off as "I'm addressing the theme now" or "This is the plot point" and this jars strongly with the more natural moments. The best comparison I can make is if you were to combine Debussy and Haydn into one piece where it goes back and forth between the two. That's my main problem with
The Deer Hunter and I'm sure I'll feel the same way with
Heaven's Gate and the other films he has done.
And I do believe it is possible to blend naturalism/realism and formalism. In fact, I recently viewed
Shame and that I felt had the right balance of something that was deliberately constructed but is allowed itself to just be. It's what I would call a "realist melodrama." But it is a balancing act that some directors can pull off and others don't. I feel with Ciminio, it's like combining oil and water.
And clarify something ... I never said I was against deliberate pacing. I do appreciate it for what it is and I've seen examples of this working well. Nor did I think the pacing was a problem with The Deer Hunter. My big issue with the film was the combining of what I felt was more natural and what was contrived. The best example of this was the final hunting trip amongst the guys. Pretty much the whole sequence was played out very well and very naturally (even with Michael saying "This is something else. This is this"). When they return the bar, they continue that energy of camaraderie that felt very genuine and real. Then it switches into "this is an obvious mood change" when the Chopin nocturne is played on the piano. To me, it felt like a contrived mood whiplash where you're suddenly told "yeah, this is a sad moment because three guys are about to be shipped off to Vietnam now." I felt there could have been a more subtle/natural way to do it.
But again, this is just my take on it. I put the caveat there for anyone to take it for whatever it's worth.