Customer Reviews

Gates of Heaven [VHS]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

You don't know me. I'm not given to hyberbole. But, Ebert's right about this film: There's not a better American film. And it IS a thoroughly American film. It's about business, money, pets, love, success, failure. It's all here. I'm grabbing this and taking it with me when the spaceships come. (They're due in September.)

Here's what is amazing about Gates of Heaven: Two completely different people could watch it and both enjoy it from different perspectives. For one, this could be a heartwarming, courageous tale about dedicated pet-owners and their struggle to build pet cemeteries. For another, this could be simply a hilarious look at human nature and its peculiar quirks and tendencies.

Errol Morris knew he was getting more than information about pet cemeteries when filming Gates of Heaven; he was capturing real, sincere moments by people possessing all kinds of characteristics. Sadness, cynicism, laughter, envy, and the unflinching love for pets is present throughout Gates of Heaven. This film isn't really a documentary about pet cemeteries at all. Rather, it is about human beings, the passions we have, and how we achieve them in this life. Near the end of the film as I watched a young hippie cemetery owner playing his guitar up in the hills, I realized how far this film was reaching for, and how successful it was in reaching it.

From the jealousy of a man towards his younger, more successful brother, to the hilarious (and somewhat sad) monologue by a lonely old woman, Gates of Heaven ultimately shows that no matter what people strive to achieve, whether it be pet cemeteries or President of the United States, it's their heart and souls that will remain timeless.

'Gates of Heaven' is a film by Errol Morris that deals with an ambitious pet cemetery in California. What makes this documentary so facinating has nothing to do with the actual animals, but rather the people who love and care for them. As the film progresses, one will realize it is actually a study of human nature and psychology. With the central focus of giving pets a secure resting place, the film incredibly shows human frailty, ambition, and sadness.
For those who have never had pets, this film can be hard to relate to. My family has never owned any pets, but I've had friends who have had pets. They are very attached to the pets, and the pets are like family memebers. One has to watch this movie with an open heart, or they will never understand the feelings of the people in this documentary. To some of these people, a pet is more of a friend than a human being will ever be, and there is some real truth behind that.
People might get different interpertations of what Morris is trying to show here. To me, 'Gates of Heaven' uses the pet cemetary business as a backdrop to show a much deeper aspects of human nature.

This film, along with Morris' short, "Vernon Florida", and Orson Welles' "F for Fake" get my votes for the best documentaries ever made by American filmmakers. It's a shame and a sham that this film is out-of-print, let alone not the subject of a Criterion DVD. It's difficult to explain just what is so triumphant and beautiful about Morris' films, this one being his best. You could say, "Well, it's these people he finds," and you'd be right but not really hitting it on the head. He somehow does better than anyone else what you must do to create compelling "true stories" - you must get your subjects to reveal themselves completely, to speak for the camera from their heart-of-hearts. This movie is "about" people who have a passion for their pets, especially the final resting places of their pets. But Morris' camera, within that framework, records an unfolding of universal truths. You can't buy this great movie from Amazon - but your local Blockbuster probably has it. So, as soon as you can, head next door to your local independent video store and rent it. In fact, you should probably hook up a second VCR and rip it for yourself. It's worth it.

Although Thin Blue Line was a classic this is Mr Morris's best work in our view.Bluntly, I believe this film is the greatest American documentary film ever made.

This unique film represents not only the beginning of Earl Morris' career, but the finest look at the American obsession with the treatment and care of our pets.

The format is simple; we are introduced to a man whose dream of a pet cemetery has failed. The remains of those animals were sent to another pet cemetery that is flourishing. In between, we meet the owners of both cemeteries and some of the pet owners and hear stories on a variety of subjects. It's hard to categorize this documentary as a comedy or drama since the tone is so straightforward. But that allows "Gates of Heaven" to soar above such conventions and reach a level few films ever have.

Some of the interviews are quite funny and I think all of us can relate to a scene early in the film when an elderly lady is holding her dog near her face and asking him to sing. Another very bizarre image is the sight of a man player his electric guitar at full blast overlooking the pet cemetery.

I was particularly moved by the stories of the two sons of the successful pet cemetery owner. The younger one seems quite lonely living all by himself, yet he seems content while his older brother is in quite a conundrum. Having failed in previous businesses and now behind his sibling at the cemetery, he's still proud of the "positive mental approach" he's been taught over the years.

The most stunning moment happens midway through the film when another elderly lady sits in her doorway and relates the story of her deceased pet. She quickly shifts to describe her no good son and tells that story in a way that is so natural, yet using words and phrases that Mark Twain would probably admire and be in awe of.

The presentation of the movie is full screen, not widescreen. But given how the movie was shot and the type of film used, the viewer is not missing much on the edges. I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of extras, such as no interview with Earl Morris. Or even a text background on the making of "Gates of Heaven" which would give some enlightenment to the journey the filmmaker took in making this masterpiece.

No doubt there will be a expanded or "Ultimate" edition DVD released that will include such extras. But for now we have this version and that will do.

I read Ebert's review before I saw the movie. Although I tend to agree with Ebert, I went into the film expecting to be let down. I watched it with my wife. After the first 15 minutes we looked at each other and sighed "boring". Then something strange happened. About 2/3ds of the way through we sat there stunned. My god, this is great!

I could personally care less about other people's pets, but that doesn't matter in this film. Somehow Morris gets all of these people to go deep. The rendering plant owner who makes a business of turning pets and farm animals into soap and glue explains his practical view of the end of life. The man who started a pet cemetery triggered by his hatred of rendering plants and his profound love of animals sounds a lot like the animal rights activists of today.

The sometimes silly but poigniant commentary of pet owners dotted throughout the documentary give glimpses of love and loss.

We were really taken with the second set of pet cemetery owners. They are pure capitalists who are successful in business because they know their customers and how to squeeze the most out of a buck. In spite of that rather stark exterior, they wonderfully round out Morris's study of human nature. They show jealousy, loneliness, joy, pride, delusion, frustration and cunning, but no apparent love.

I would recommend this film to anyone, but caution the viewer to be patient and open minded, and you will be rewarded.

What is most impressive about this film is that it manages to get ordinary people talking about extraordinary subjects without the speakers' ever even realizing the depths of their observations.

By asking people to speak of their deceased and beloved pets, Errol Morris has coaxed out of them deeply moving reflections about heavy philosophical issues. There are few films that combine humor, sympathy, and thought in so stirring a fashion.

If you held a gun to my head and made me name my favorite film, I'd probably pick Gates of Heaven. I've thought a great deal about what makes it so special, and maybe the fact that the answer still eludes me, that it's still a mystery, is a major reason. I know that it confirms for me why I love "absurdist" playwrites like Beckett and Pinter. Those two (and any great writer) would have been jealous of the extrodinary monologue that the old woman delivers mid-way through the film. I don't have a ton of knowledge of the documentary form, but I know that what Morris does is unique. It's as close to fiction as you can get without hiring actors. It's just a flat out beautful, poetic, hilaroius film. God bless you, California. Thanks for giving us these people. And thank you Mr. Morris for reading the newspaper. (The scenes where the elder brother is mowing the little plot shirtless intercut with his self-help spiel are classic).

The film has a perverse quality, as if watching someone slowly die, and trying to empathize with it. In that sense, the two films that most closely mirror it are fictive films- Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small and Tod Browning's Freaks. One might also put it in league with the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest were it not played, or shot, straight. In fact, this is the film that Werner Herzog ate his shoe over. Morris had no money to finance the film and Herzog told him to do it anyway, and promised Morris that if he made a film, Herzog eat a shoe at the premiere, ala Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. The act was subsequently made into the short subject film, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
The film's premise is that there are people who will pay thousands of dollars to bury their pets like humans. Ok, I'm a pet lover- a cat lover, but I've never done so. I've never viscerally understood why we bury humans. A corpse is a corpse is a corpse. As long as it is disposed of cleanly, who cares? Yet the film starts off with a disabled old man, Floyd McClure, who tried to start a pet cemetery south of San Francisco, the Foothill Pet Cemetery in Los Altos, because he was haunted by the memories and smells of an animal rendering plant he visited as a youth, as well as the death of his collie as a boy, when it was run over by a car. Manifestly lacking any business sense, the man soon lost his business- as well as did several other investors (one schlemiel lost thirty grand in 1970s cash!), and the animals- four hundred and fifty pets, had to be exhumed and moved to another better pet cemetery, the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park, in Napa Valley- which has designer plots, run by a family of even weirder folk, if possible....The weirdest and most hypnotic person onscreen is an old lady who sits in her home's doorway, and divides the film's halves between McClure and the Harbertses. She is Florence Rasmussen- the poster girl for human strangeness, and she distractedly and digressively paints her tale of woe, and her no good grandson- whom she's going to get money back from, and his whorish ex-wife, whom she calls a `tramp.' What this has to do with dead pets is anyone's guess, although she ends her soliloquy by lamenting the loss of a black kitten and suspecting that a kitty serial killer is on the prowl. She is sort of the addle-brained female equivalent of what Danny Harberts will likely end up as. Yet, despite all that, there is a genuine movement of emotion that the film conjures; as well as some truths- even if as trite as the quote which ends the last paragraph.
Perhaps the greatest emotion conveyed is when dumb old Floyd McClure says, `When I turn my back, I don't know you, not truly. But I can turn my back on my little dog, and I know that he's not going to jump on me or bite me; but human beings can't be that way.' And this is why the film is worth watching. It is not even remotely a great film, but it is an interesting document, something that, like a truly great film, such as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, could be sent on a spaceship for aliens to find in a million years, and tell something of what a real human was. The fact that such qualitatively disparate examples of an art form can reach the same level of inner....dare I say it?, truth, is one of those grand ineffables that makes art worth indulging, sort of like the last shot of Gates Of Heaven, of the Harberts' growing dream cemetery at dusk. On and on it just is. Then, like life and dream, it all ends. So, too, humanity. Alack?