I just saw Heaven's Gate.....what utter crap!

Cafe Society
1

Well, after reading so much about this notorious Michael Cimino film, including much info on its nightmarish production and reviews on how wretched it is, I finally decided to give the DVD a rental.

First, a breif synopsis. Kris Kristofferson stars as a sheriff in 1890’s Wyoming who discovers a secret plot on the part of the local millionaire cattle ranchers to hunt down and murder some pesky European immigrants who’ve been squatting on their land and stealing their cattle. It just so happens that his girlfriend, a French immigrant bordello madam, is one of people marked for death because she accepts stolen cattle as payment from the immigrants. So of course he wants her to leave town before the shit goes down. But, alas, she is also dating a friend of his, who just happens to be an assassin played by Christopher Walken who works for the cattle barons…

No doubt, this movie is HUGE. The sheer scale of some scenes defies description…there are scenes set at a Harvard graduation that feature thousands of extras dancing almost in sync, followed up by gigantic street scenes in a Wyoming railroad town, people bustling everywhere, wagons and carriages speeding by, trains running in the far background, etc. It’s the kind of stuff you will never see again in these CGI-happy days.

And certain parts of the movie are beautiful and amazing. There is a massive sequence featuring the European immigrants roller-skating to a folk band, followed by a virtuoso dance between Kristofferson and his girlfriend…and also quieter romantic scenes that are surprising in the naturalism and lack of phony Hollywood emoting.

BUT THE MOVIE HAS NO GOD DAMN STORY.

Well, there is a story there, but it’s buried underneath endless footage of people doing absolutely NOTHING. There’s a whole five or six minute sequence of Walken showing the French madam his new place, and they don’t talk, or even look at each other, but just stand in the middle of the room staring at the floor…then they make eye contact, smile, and that’s the end of the scene.

This is a 90 minute movie dragged out to 3 hours and 39 minutes.

And the sheer stupidity and annoyance of those “heroic” immigrants will just about make you sick. The aforementioned roller skating scene was cool, but for the rest of the movie, they all stand around dramatically clutching their heads like silent movie actors and BABBLING, CRYING, and SCREAMING at each other almost non-stop in Polish, Russian, German, Serbian, and god knows what else. You know from their desperate faces and wide eyes that they’re saying something important, but no matter, because THERE ARE NO SUBTITLES for any of it.

Sam Waterson is the villian of the piece, and seems to be imitating a English butler with a severe sexual orientation issue. Jeff Bridges walks around unshaven and top-hatted, has nothing to offer to the story, and generally looks like a wino. The usually excellent Christopher Walken doesn’t have one good line in the film and is fitted with a lame mustache that looks like something a 8th grader would be cultivating.

Make no mistake…this is one of the most beautifully shot and yet most inane and misbegotten movies ever made.

I literally DARE anyone to watch it.

2

You now know why it bombed at the box office and was panned by the critics.

3

Well, I think I get a pass as I saw both Ishtar and Howard the Duck on the respective opening nights. In neither case, I add, was it my idea, but I gamely went along.

4

Here’s the funny part; the 3 hour 39 minute version is the CUT version. Cimono wanted the movie to be released in the original five hour cut.

You know all those “Director’s Cut” DVDs and tapes? I have never watched one, not a single one, that was not inferior to the edited version of the movie, and some were vasty inferior. Well, can you imagine a director’s cut of “Heaven’s Gate”? We’re talking about a movie that actually bankrupted the studio. It destroyed Cimono’s career. The movie was such a catastrophe it ended the auteur era of Hollywood and ushered in one of the worst movie eras of all time. We’re talking about a movie that in its own horrible way was every bit as influential as “Citizen Kane” or “Star Wars” or “The Godfather,” except in reverse.

Collounsbury: You are a remarkably brave man, but I can top you: I saw “Battlefield Earth.” Platoons of the world’s top psychologists working around the clock on my scarred brain have been unable to undo the damage.

5

I completely disagree.

It’s based on the Johnson County Wars and the lynching oc “Cattle Kate”.

There’s a lot of character development. Without it, the characters would be the usual cardboard cut-outs that appear in most Hollywood dreck.

That’s the way people act in real life. In general, people aren’t heroic. As in High Noon, the people are generally a bunch of cowards. They do eventually summon their courage, only to be thwarted by politics.

Billy Irvine (John Hurt) is a classmate of James Averill (Kris Kristofferson). He’s not a butler, but a member of the upper-class, just as Kristofferson and Waterston are. But he was the “frat boy”. He has spent his life partying and has become an alcoholic. His alcoholism is worsened because he is an idealist who finds the actions of his class despicable.

Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography in this film is some of the best he’s ever done. The man is brilliant.

Heaven’s Gate is a beautiful film that tells a story about a period in American history that few know about. Of course it was not true-to-life in the sense that the real events ended the way they did. In actuality Ellen Watson and James Averill were lynched for cattle rustling and for being terrorists. Cimino went to great lengths to be accurate in his portrayal of the times. I think that there was nothing in the film that could not be documented by period photographs.

The immigrants were not squatting on the land. They bought it and it was theirs. Unfortunately, they were on land that was wanted by the cattle barons who lived in the area. IIRC, there was an abnormally harsh winter that took a toll on the cattle population. Some of the immigrants stole cattle in order to survive. The cattle barons were faced with the closing of their open range by a bunch of farmers and were angry at the loss of their already-depleted stock of cattle. Rather than follow the laws to take care of the problem, they decided to hire killers to mete out their own “justice”. The immigrant farmers legall bought, paid for, and owned the land they were on, but the cattle barons thought of the land as their own – although the never had owned it. The cattle baron’s view was that this was a bunch of unclean foreigners; and how dare they assert their freedoms in the face of the Upper Class?

Ellen Watson (“Cattle Kate” – who was not nearly as pretty as Isabelle Hupert) ran a brothel. She accepted cattle in exchange for services and was not particular about where the cattle came from.

So it’s a great story. Immigrants just trying to survive in a new country after spending all of their money on land. Prejudice by native Americans. The arrogance of the Upper Class who felt that having money put them above the law. A whore who is making a good living, and the Upper Class idealist who loves her. I think the film does an excellent job of portraying the characters. All of their motivations are clear, from Waterston & Co.'s feelings of entitlement, to Hupert’s pragmatism, to Kristofferson’s idealism, to Walken’s struggle between his heritage and his current position. The portrayals of frontier life in the late-19th Century including class struggles, poverty of the immigrants, interactions between the “Americans” and the immigrants, and the accoutrements of the era were quite well done.

I didn’t like the dance at Harvard, nor the roller skating. I thought they were over-long and added little or nothing to the story. They were absolutely beautiful, but they were unnecessary and slowed the pace of the film.

If you’re looking for a Clint Eastwood or John Wayne film, this is not a film for you. But if you’re looking for accurate portrayals and good character development, and if you’re interested in Old West history, then this is a great one. (And I like seeing Isabelle Hupert naked.) On a “five star” scale, I’d give it four stars (maybe four and a half). Overall the film is excellent, but I felt the dance and roller skating scenes were over-done.

6

As far as “director’s cuts” go, IMO, the director’s cut of Blade Runner was much superior to the edited version.
Heaven’s Gate wasn’t as bad as all that. There are far worse movies out there. I’d rather watch Heaven’s Gate than Xanadu, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!, The Fast and the Furious, Young Guns I & II, or Rocky and Bullwinkle just for starters.

7

I haven’t seen Heaven’s Gate, but I did see one of Cimino’s later works, The Sunchaser, starring Woody Harrelson. Again, the landscapes are beautiful, but the rest of the film is a steaming-fresh crapcake.

8

Johnny L.A., I’m giving you a knowing wink. :wink: I absolutely loved this movie. It is beautiful beyond description and the story moved along at a realistic pace. Plus, it makes me want Kris Krisstofferson in the naughtiest way.

9

The history was interesting, yes. But I think I’d be better off reading a text than watching this nightmare.

Character development? I just don’t see that, and it’s another reason why I hated the film overall. Only Isabelle Huppert really shined in the film, but she’s excellent in everything she does. A actress with much natural ease and poise, and not a whole lot of pretension. Everybody else seemed rather one-note and pedantic; they looked as if they were struggling.

Interesting that you thought the dance and roller-skating scenes were overdone…I thought they were the most fascinating sequences in the film. They reminded me a lot of the wedding scene from The Deer Hunter which is one of my favorite parts of that particular film. Also because the immigrants seemed a little more realistic and likeable than they are later on in the story, where they come off like raving moronic lunatics and it’s impossible (for me, anyway) to find any kind of sympathy for their plight.

I’m willing to bet that the revised 2 and a half hour cut released by United Artists (after the disasterous showings of the 3 hour, 39 minute version) plays a lot better.

Sometimes a little can go a longer way, me thinks. There’s only one movie that came near the 4-hour mark that I thought was a complete success and a classic: Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America.

10

This is always a bad sign.