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“Heaven’s Gate” kind of makes you wonder what could have been. If Cimino had managed to get his ego under control, if the studio had assigned someone ruthless to ride herd on the production, if the stars weren’t so miscast, if anyone had been able to just say “No!” to him.
What then could have been? Probably, not much. A forgettable western, that by now would be forgotten. The actual plot of “Heaven’s Gate” is so routine, it could have been disposed of in ninety minutes, tops. And it has been disposed of in other westerns. Ruthless greedy cattle barons led by Sam Waterston, who should have grown his mustache out a little more so he could twirl it while villainizing, conspire to drive noble farmer sheepherding peasants off the open range. Goons are hired. Shootings follow. The noble peasants unite to fight back. There’s nothing original about the story. This one is very slightly based on historical events, changing the characters without changing the names in this case. But, you don’t need three hours and change to tell that tale.
Nor, however, do you need five minutes of black screen, twenty minutes of The Blue Danube, a half hour or so of roller skating, and endless, endless scenes of Kristofferson and Walken and Huppert staring blankly/soulfully at each other.
Yet, that’s where all the pleasure is to be found. The roller skating sequence is bravura filmmaking such as one rarely sees. The Harvard grads dancing on the Quad is beautiful. It has nothing whatever to do with the narrative, but it is a marvelous vision. Did we need a steam yacht at the end? We did not. Wasted time, wasted money, wasted opportunities? Sure. But without these things, would anyone bother to see “Heaven’s Gate” today?
Not for the actors, for sure. Or the plot.
It’s hard to say which of the triangle is most miscast; Walken just looks uncomfortable behind his mustache. Kristofferson mumbles and swallows his dialog and thinks, or was instructed to think, that taciturn glumness is the same as acting. But Huppert….beautiful, but totally unconvincing as the madam with the heart of gold, who everybody in town seems (save a few devout peasants) to regard as their best and brightest and most deserving of a glorious new carriage on her birthday. Even without her struggles with the English language, her character is so inexplicable that even Meryl Streep couldn’t have pulled it off.
Torn between two lovers, one a homicidal serial murderer for hire and the other an alcoholic rich boy who can’t be troubled to fulfill even the simplest parts of his supposed job. Huppert’s madam/entrepreneur, informed that she’s on a list of potential assassinees, can’t be troubled to get on a train or stagecoach. Nor give a pass to entering her house even though the Association men have helpfully left their horses outside as a tipoff.
Walken, having shot down some Association rando, then goes back to his squalid shack to await his own appointment with fate. Rather than hide out or do some sniping or whatever.
And Kristofferson is so intent on “The Law” that he passes on every chance but one to do something that might help the situation. Because the Association has “The Law” on their side. And fifty inept gunslingers.
I say inept, because they somehow get themselves pinned down by a bunch of rubes using the silliest siege engines outside of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Seriously, you cannot watch these armored wagons with a straight face.
I should mention John Hurt, but his place in this story is so inconsequential that it’s hard to figure just why he was cast as the town drunk in the first place. Comic relief? He’s not a funny drunk. To throw Kristofferson’s own drunkenness into sharper relief? Because he looks dissipated and Cimino liked dissipation? Who can say?
But that’s all carping about a bad script and bad casting. Without the endless discursions and ornamentations, “Heaven’s Gate” would be a routine late western. What makes it worth seeing is just how in love Cimino was with the possibilities of cinema. The camera swirling and circling around the waltzing couples and the wheeling skaters is sheer exuberance in movement for its own sake. A little vertigo-inducing, and it goes on far too long, but there’s joy in it. Look at what I can do! Move the camera on a dance through the muddy streets. Linger on the majestic mountains. Use candles and kerosene lamps to pierce the gloom. Even the silly climactic fight has action and lighting and explosions better than many a Marvel movie.
And the long, long drawn out significant looks and wordless carriage rides, muddy streets, elaborate sets, there’s grandeur that may have doomed the movie but is still high moviemaking. Terrence Malick mined the western, too, with the amazing “Days of Heaven”, another glacially slow, narrative-impaired picture. But Malick can get away with it because he produced image after image that’s achingly beautiful, worthy of being framed and mounted in a gallery. Cimino doesn’t have that eye. He strains for it, but it’s just out of reach.
But look at that steam locomotive! Again, completely unnecessary to the story, and acquired at great expense. But lovely. The immigrants clinging to the top of the cars, the sepia interiors, the chuffing and clanging and venting of steam, it’s the kind of thing that’d be done with CGI now, if it were done at all. In “Heaven’s Gate” it does nothing to advance the plot, true, but it’s still a wonderful sequence.
Michael Cimino….I wonder what movies he could have gone on to make if only he’d been able to bring in “Heaven’s Gate” with more modest budget overruns, with more bankable stars, with a little less ambition and a little more prudence. Would he have gone on to become a great director? Or was he a flash in the pan of cinema, a creature of that one brief moment of auteur cinema? The movie that made his mark, “The Deer Hunter” has a lot of the tell-tale signs of his self-indulgence that came to full flower in “Heaven’s Gate”. That wedding was endless; the deer hunting just went on and on. But Walken was as magnetic in “Deer Hunter” as he was adrift in “Heaven’s Gate”. De Niro was astonishing. Meryl Streep showed why she was Meryl Streep. “Deer Hunter” is an undeniable masterpiece for all its faults.
“Heaven’s Gate” is more of a self-involved masterwork, Cimino demonstrating his love for the camera (and his own legend) without worrying about what his patron was paying him for.
None of the various edits of “Heaven’s Gate” have ever worked to produce a flowing narrative. Cimino wasn’t interested in just telling a story. He was making an epic, or thought he was. But it’s worth seeing the fullest cut of the movie, if only to get some idea of what his vision might have accomplished, if he’d only had the discipline to match his ambition.
Faulkner is supposed to have said that “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Meaning, that when the author is in love with a sentence, even if he thinks it’s clever and precious and beautiful, especially if it’s the best line he ever wrote, if it doesn’t serve its place in the story, he has to edit it ruthlessly. Michael Cimino kept all of his darlings in “Heaven’s Gate.”
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Customer reviews
Restored Director's Cut Is A Masterpiece. Why Aren't The Other Versions Available On Home Video?
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2018
Savaged by critics and audiences alike when released in 1980, and initially viewed as one of the worst cinematic photoplays ever made, effectively destroying the career of writer-director Michael Cimino, then fresh from his Academy Award wins for The Deer Hunter, this digitally restored Director's Cut of the picture (216 minutes) is excellent. Though lengthy, the film never drags (take it from one who grew up watching the sound remakes of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ).As far as i know, the 325 minute workprint cut that cimino screened for studio executives, the initial premiere release that ran for 219 minutes, the theatrical 149 minute cut, and the radical 219 minute cut reassembled by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are not available on home video or any digital platform. I wonder why they are not available. The film also killed Kris Kristofferson's career as a leading man, thereby leading him to focusing on character parts when he's not singing. The only ones who went on to have a substantial career after this are: Jeff Bridges, Christopher Walken, John Hurt (who recently passed away), and Willem Dafoe (who is uncredited, and can be briefly seen-and possibly heard-during the rooster fighting sequence).Heaven's Gate is rated R for strong graphic violence, blasphemy, profanity, some full frontal female nudity, and a rape scene.
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2018
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