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Heaven's Gate (1980)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
7/16
7/16:
Michael Cimino doesn't fucking get it.
Heaven's Gate has been routinely included in just about every Worst Films list there is. There are good reasons why
it belongs there, but I don't view it as a truly awful movie because there have been worse. Hypothetically
speaking, if Platoon was released before
The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino would've never won anything. As a
result, he wouldn't get the Wellesian-like free rein to make Heaven's Gate the prolix picture that it is.
Why The Deer Hunter won a boatload of awards is the twist. People went apeshit over it. Take the twist away, and
all there is is an overlong, ordinary Vietnam War picture. That's exactly what happened to
Heaven's Gate: an overlong, ordinary Western picture. Michael Cimino still doesn't fucking get it.
Beautiful cinematography alone does not translate to a good film. It must take much more than that. Cimino shot 220 hours of
film stock including dozens of retakes for every scene. Did he fucking realize two hours was the maximum most people could
withstand in one sitting?
Every scene is ten to fifteen minutes too long. They add nothing of significance to the overall picture. There's no advancement
in the plot (by the way, which of the seven or nine plots is the main one?) in almost every scene which turns out to be
irrelevant but only to serve as an excuse to look at the scenery. None of the characters, not even the protagonist, is
developed to the point of caring. They just go through the motions and then die. That's it. Therefore, who the fuck
cares?
John Hurt's magnified presence seems to indicate he'll play a meaningful part. At the end, it's revealed that
he's another secondary character. So, why make a big deal out of him in the prologue? Plus, I thought he
disagreed with the men of the Stock Growers Association yet participated with them in the killing at the end? What was he
doing, in the face of suicide, by standing up in the middle of the garbled gunfight while drinking liquor from his
metal flask?
Anyway, John Hurt had nothing to do during the filming and got bored of waiting for his next scene which wouldn't come for weeks.
So he left in the middle of the filming to do The Elephant Man, which was
actually finished in time, before he came back to be shocked that Heaven's Gate hadn't been completed yet.
Meanwhile, Michael Cimino takes Sergei Eisenstein's route by showing emotions of the Slavic people's faces inside the
tent, but who the fuck are they? How do I connect to them? That's the whole problem. In order to make a good film, the
director has to make me care about them; otherwise, there's no movie. Develop the characters for fuck's sake.
That's why Michael Cimino still doesn't fucking get it.
What's the relevance of the prologue: the Harvard graduation ceremony? What's its connection to the grand scheme of things?
Michael Cimino fails to tie it all together along with the rest of the disconnected scenes. What the fuck does the fiddler
mounted on roller skates playing the instrument for five uninterrupted minutes have to do with the plot? Explain this to me.
The dance scene when everybody is twirling around like crazy...is the movie supposed to be a musical or a Western?
Michael Cimino still doesn't fucking get it.
Rumored to be initially two hours long, the shooting scene à la The Wild Bunch at the end, what the fuck is that all
about? Why are the Slavs stupidly running around in circles like retards with no worked-out battle plan in mind? And the ending,
what the fuck is that all about? Why did I have to waste 216 minutes for nothing? What the fuck is Michael Cimino doing
by abusing these animals just to make a movie for entertainment? Does he think the horses and chickens are having a barrel of
laughs by taking the abuse while being filmed? Michael Cimino still doesn't fucking get it.
I knew what I was getting into. That's why I avoided the movie on purpose for many years. I wasn't ready to
sit down and endure the bloody wasteful mess that cost $44 million only to take in a total profit of $1.3 (some say
$3.5) million, almost bankrupting United Artists which was founded by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks,
D.W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford. The studio was eventually sold to MGM.
All in all, Heaven's Gate is the cinema equivalent of Michael Cimino masturbating to himself.