I recorded the full-length "director's cut" version off of TCM the other day to see if there was validation for this being one of the biggest box-office busts in movie history. After viewing I can certainly understand why it was.
I have no problem with movies taking their time developing, so that we can get to know characters and really feel a part of what is going on in the film. But this film gave me the impression that director Michael Cimino felt moving things along at a snail's pace automatically makes those things happen. In spite of the epic length he had to work with, Cimino's character development is quite minimalistic, due to the sheer volume of dead space devoted to empty looks and a lack of dialogue or at least a lack of comprehensible dialogue, which is thanks to un-subtitled foreign languages or bad sound recording. The end result is another film in which we just don't care what happens to these characters, because we really know so little about them, nor are we given a reason to care for them, other than the fact that they exist.
The film begins with a long and tedious set-up at Harvard, leading the viewer to believe there is going to be an important significance for this later. As it turns out, there isn't. Strangely, the relationships established in these scenes end up going nowhere. By the end of the movie, several characters, especially John Hurt's and Jeff Bridges', were so pathetically wasted in their development, I wondered why they were even in the film at all.
Worst, silliest, most bizarre and utterly maddening scene: the targeted immigrants decide to fight back against the band of regulators. They end up on horseback, stupidly circling around the enemy encampment like a bunch of caricatured Indians circling the wagons in an old Western serial. The only thing missing from the scene as the immigrants get picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery are those stereotypical, hysterical Indian war whoops.
But that is just one example of people behaving extremely stupidly and unrealistically in this film.
As someone who enjoys subtlety in a film and doesn't even mind one that is slower paced, I nonetheless found myself fast-forwarding through several non-eventful minutes of this film. Thank goodness for that technology, but it made me wonder how anybody would have had patience for even a trimmed-down version of this film when it first showed in theaters.
I have no problem with movies taking their time developing, so that we can get to know characters and really feel a part of what is going on in the film. But this film gave me the impression that director Michael Cimino felt moving things along at a snail's pace automatically makes those things happen. In spite of the epic length he had to work with, Cimino's character development is quite minimalistic, due to the sheer volume of dead space devoted to empty looks and a lack of dialogue or at least a lack of comprehensible dialogue, which is thanks to un-subtitled foreign languages or bad sound recording. The end result is another film in which we just don't care what happens to these characters, because we really know so little about them, nor are we given a reason to care for them, other than the fact that they exist.
The film begins with a long and tedious set-up at Harvard, leading the viewer to believe there is going to be an important significance for this later. As it turns out, there isn't. Strangely, the relationships established in these scenes end up going nowhere. By the end of the movie, several characters, especially John Hurt's and Jeff Bridges', were so pathetically wasted in their development, I wondered why they were even in the film at all.
Worst, silliest, most bizarre and utterly maddening scene: the targeted immigrants decide to fight back against the band of regulators. They end up on horseback, stupidly circling around the enemy encampment like a bunch of caricatured Indians circling the wagons in an old Western serial. The only thing missing from the scene as the immigrants get picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery are those stereotypical, hysterical Indian war whoops.
But that is just one example of people behaving extremely stupidly and unrealistically in this film.
As someone who enjoys subtlety in a film and doesn't even mind one that is slower paced, I nonetheless found myself fast-forwarding through several non-eventful minutes of this film. Thank goodness for that technology, but it made me wonder how anybody would have had patience for even a trimmed-down version of this film when it first showed in theaters.