It's hard to say what the problem was without seeing the actual definition of the tables and the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE.
There are times where you may have to structure your view query slightly different than you would a standard query in order to get the planner to optimize things in the same way, particularly if the view is using subqueries.
Ultimately it is possible to have a view run just as fast a regular query, but you might (though not always) have to do a little bit of extra work with EXPLAIN ANALYZE to make sure things are working as you expect.
There are times where you may have to structure your view query slightly different than you would a standard query in order to get the planner to optimize things in the same way, particularly if the view is using subqueries.
Ultimately it is possible to have a view run just as fast a regular query, but you might (though not always) have to do a little bit of extra work with EXPLAIN ANALYZE to make sure things are working as you expect.