The Deer Hunter

I finally watched this film on the weekend. It was an interesting portrait of blue-collar America in the mid-1970s on the whole. The pacing however, ugh, the first hour or so just drags on and on. Do we really need an hour to establish that these are blue collar guys from smalltown Pennsylvania and that they are ethnic Russians? Once it gets going the movie is fairly interesting with some great performances, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes open for that first bit. The symbolism of Mike Vronsky's beat-up '59 Cadillac was interesting in that it contrasts the optimism of 1950s America with the broken dreams of the 1970s.