Gates of Heaven

At first glance, Gates of Heaven appears to be a documentary about the lives of people that run pet cemetaries. On second glance, you realize you are witnessing a visual essay on the subject of death and dying, and how these average folk deal with it.

There are esesentially three parts to the film. All deal with either the struggle to build a pet cemetery or maintaining a pet cemetery. The most interesting segment is with a family who runs a successful cemetery in the desert of California. You see generations of a family that has done nothing but run this business. They explain the philosophy behind why they choose to bury pets, and why pets deserve burial just as humans do.

Morris lets the camera do all the work. With the exception of two shots every other one is static. A talking head documentary that could probably fit the definition exactly. Morris knows when exactly to inject humor into the film, just enough to keep you interested.

If you saw this film nowadays, you would expect it to be on Lifetime or some other obscure cable channel. With a third glance and possibly a fourth, you can see the message Morris is trying to get across. Everyone has a way of dealing with death. It is just how you deal with it that determines how comfortable you are with it.

Early Errol Morris documentary, pitting the true believers versus the salesmen of the world. Both trying to fill a need, I got the vibe that when Floyd McClure talked about that specifically, he was really talking about the emotional hole left in people's lives by a departed pet. Rather than a hole in one's wallet, or just the hole in the ground.

Evidently the first part of this took place darn close to where I live these days: Los Altos, CA! Indeed there is a "Gates of Heaven" cemetery up by Rancho San Antonio, but I think that's just for us two-legged critters.

While this definitely had some clever editing (a couple of times, he turned on a word beautifully from one interviewee to the next), there was a lot of strange miscellany left in the film. I call to the witness stand the lady who loaned her son $400 for a car, but never sees him any more. Additionally the two squabbling ladies of Los Altos. Fascinating to watch, and more of a precursor to Morris' "First Person" show (worth catching if you can!) He just kind of sets the camera down and let's folks go awhile...like a confessional/diary as much as his latter day interregatron.

Somehow, whether by coaxing them with a Coors, or just quietly sitting and filming, Morris gets people to really expound on whatever details of their life seem to really matter to them. A couple of the pet couples are placed before tall images of flora? Not sure of the significance.

The most touching moment is the filming of the little tombstones for a variety of pets, all with some heartfelt little sententia or sweet goodbye. Putting it on film in a way makes these even more immortal.

Not sure how people who don't have any pets at all will react to this. I watched this with our 11-year old Wire Fox Terrier, but he zonked out (tends to prefer Bollywwod?). But I'm sitting there thinking of his mortality and the proposed $3K charge for cataract surgery and being a bit torn between loving my pet deeply, versus calculating the cost of him.

I guess the rendering man is important; he did all he could to wipe the smirk off his face having clearly jumped the shark on the pet v. food debate. And I mean putting food on his table...as much as quasi-food like bonemeal and by-products. For him, it was just a job *clearly* and he seemed perplexed how anybody could see it otherwise.

But bottom line, all of these people were making their living (including Morris as the filmmaker) off the death of pets. We want our lives to be filled with more than making our rent and paying our bills, and one way we try to do that is through our relationships with pets.

This film's alright, not up there with some of Morris' other work. Oddly comic at times. Like jeez, the pet cemetery called "Bubbling Well", that sounds like a code phrase for a rendering plant. Ick. "Gates of Heaven" felt at times like a strange good-guy/bad-guy dramatic film rather than a documentary. By the way, where are the trophy (Caine?) and guitar (Abel?) brothers today?? Looks like they're still in business

http://www.bubbling-well.com/

Bottom line, I'd say see this, but only *after* taking the dog out for a nice walk or a run along the beach.

6/10

PS My dog wants to add

"A cemetery for cats, come on you've got to be kidding!"

I first saw this movie in a college theater in its initial release. The movie poster claimed it was "Not quite a movie about pet cemeteries." I didn't know what to expect, but I have always liked the offbeat. This movie, which even Roger Ebert calls one of his all-time favorites, turned out to be offbeat and much, much more.

Without poking fun at his subjects, Morris exposes us to the world of pet cemeteries--both the owners and caretakers of them and the people who've placed the remains of a cherished pet in their care. Sometimes we are moved by empathy; other times we laugh out loud at the preposterousness of it. (Are they for real?) At no time does Morris pass judgment. He leaves that up to us.

Along the way we meet the owner of a rendering service, and learn what happens when the circus comes to town. We learn that "God" is "dog" spelled backwards, and we meet an aspiring musician. Morris captures on film the things that make us human: grief, love, self-importance, and an unabashed silliness. The result is a quirky, poignant, and sometimes hilarious look at man's relationship with his pets.

Ebert put this film on his top 10 films of all time list. Now for this film to be up there with Citizen Kane and The Third Man, I was expecting to be thrown from my seat... that didn't happen.

I don't know how to rate this film. All throughout the doc, I didn't know what to make of it. The people were strangely saying very, very profound things, but I had to try hard to discard their appearance and mannerisms. I have a fear that the antics of Christopher Guest among others mocking simple people puts this film as a disadvantage. Halfway though I asked myself "Is this a comedy that I'm just not getting?" It had a Guffman air to it, which is to simply let the people talk and expect you to laugh. But is wasn't. I listened extra hard and started to see that it clearly did not show any comedic elements, but I still didn't know what to make of it. This film requires multiple viewings, but I don't really wanna see it again.

Ebert is right, this film is about much, much, much more than a Pet Cemetary. However, it is no where near one of the 10 greatest films of all time. Ebert must have lost a lot or pets or have a fixation on that movie theater in the sky.

The film starts with an man talking about his journey to achieve his dream of opening a pet cemetery in the south bay of San Francisco. We meet the people who help him: investors, friends, pet lovers. We also meet the guy against him, the guy who makes a living out of disposing of dead animals. This is the first part of the film. The second part of the film we meet a family that runs a successful pet cemetery, called the Bubbling Well Pet Cemetery. We meet the father, the head of the business, his wife, the moral supporter, for a lack of a better definition, and we meet the two sons involved in assisting in operations, one is a former insurance worker, the other is a business admin college grad. This is the basic outline of the film. And this sounds kind of boring, maybe. But boring it is not. If anything, slow at times. Thats because the camera is usually completely still and people are positioned in front of the camera, talking into it. What is interesting is how when these characters talk they let loose and go on tangents, exposing their world views, usually in the context of pets, and what we see is the humanity of these seemingly regular people, their musings on life and death, companionship, love, filial duty. For instance, the first man with the pet cemetery idea talks about how you can't trust people, how if you turn around they might stab you in the back, but his dog would never do this because you can trust your dog. The dead pet disposal guy rants about, and is surprised at the emotional connection people have with pets, as though it was something he just discovered in his line of work, and his line of work is treated by him as just a job, not anything controversial. And the sons of the successful pet cemetery owner, one is a motivational speaker. He talks about projecting ideas of success and refraining from using negative words with his little daughter, when she has done something wrong. And the other son talks about his musical aspirations and how he found out what love is in college and then found out about the hard break up afterwards. Erol Morris succeeds at exposing the layers of peoples in a real light, sometimes showing the contradictory and absurdness of peoples personalities and yet also showing the genuineness of people and their intentions. At times the film is comical, at times very serious, and other times sad. Morris is a keen observer of human behavior and this film illustrates this very well. For some local history from the southern SF bay area, for an interesting look at peoples views on very common human issues we can all relate with and of course on pets, see this nice movie. 8 out of 10.