La porte du paradis

Heaven's Gate seems to attract extreme reactions: outright dismissal or unqualified admiration. It is an extreme film, in length, theme and treatment. Its faults have been well-rehearsed, but some are overstated and, equally, some extraordinary virtues seem to have been little noticed. The film is very slow, certainly in the first half, but the central plot is interesting. The Johnson County disturbances exemplify a critical moment in American history, even if the sub-plot of the alienated Harvard man, at the opening and closing of the film, is irredeemably trite. That the working out of the plot is incoherent and chaotic is not a problem - these characteristics are implicit in the term "disturbances" and are an effective metaphor for the central concern of the film. The settlers are disorderly in the conduct their lives and community affairs, they are thieves, not especially lovely people, and the moral balance is tipped in their favour only by the arrogance of power of the Stockmen's leader.

Kris Kristofferson's plays his leading role to the limit of his talent as an actor, but sadly that talent is very small. However, since the part requires him to say little, this is not a fatal flaw. John Hurt plays a decadent drunk as well as an irrelevant and ridiculous part will permit. On the other hand, Isabelle Huppert's performance is outstanding: every expression, every nuance in the tone of her voice, is convincing. The subdued photography, with its narrow palette, is highly effective in communicating the sheer colourless drudgery that life at the frontier must have involved. Most striking of all is the soundtrack, that constant bustle of noise, the rushing of trains and carts and horses and men and wind across the range. This film captures a living experience and the soundtrack does most to bring it alive.

Heaven's Gate is a strange confusion of a film, but in that confusion many good things can be found.

I'm only one of a very few people who has actually seen BOTH versions of "Heaven's Gate". A frequently asked question is "Why was it ripped apart so badly?" The answer lies in this story here:

In 1984 I rented "Heaven's Gate" in order to show a friend of mine who had wanted to know if the film was as bad as he had heard. About 50 or so minutes into the film, Averill walks into Casper, Wyoming, which at the time this scene takes place is 1890. The town is filled with many meticulously dressed pedestrians, and the streets are filled with horses and buggies. My friend starts laughing uncontrollably. I asked, "Did I miss something?" He pulls himself together and says, "You gotta be kidding. There ain't even that many people in Casper, Wyoming NOW."

That in a nutshell can easily describe what went wrong. The film reeks of a director desperately trying to convince us that this movie is very important and cries for us to think he's an absolute genius. Actors take long breaths between sentences as though they were going to choke on what they are saying (man, just wait till you get to the scene where the deathlist is read out - you truly believe he'll read all 125 names), while every shot is filled with either smoke or dust in order to give us the feeling that this is ART. Camino's intentions were honorable as I truly believed that he believed he was making a masterpiece. This is what happens when you go out to make a masterpiece. I had only wished he tried to go out and make a good western. Then this film might have worked.

HEAVEN'S GATE will always be remembered for at least three things: destroying United Artists, wrecking director Michael Cimino's career, and ending the last golden age of Hollywood, when the directors could make the types of films they wanted to make. To this day we are still living through the effects from HEAVEN'S GATE. Although the film was made for only $36 million, back in 1980 that was a fortune. Many films since have lost more money, but this one wrecked a respected studio. There is no question as to where all the money went, for it is on the screen to see. Everything was carefully detailed exquisitely down the extras' clothing. An entire town was built in a remote area of Montana. The film opens with a graduation sequence that takes place at Harvard in 1870, which is nicely shot and choreographed, but is completely unnecessary. Many such scenes are scattered throughout, and the film is more than halfway over before the plot finally starts to move forward. The actors all play characters who are one-dimensional and/or irrelevant, especially the John Hurt character. Why Cimino needed so many extras to play the immigrants is unclear, because we never get to know any of them and they are so annoying when they gather together to plot strategies against the rich bad guys who want to kill them off. The editing is pretty bad, but that's to be expected because there really isn't much of a story here, just a series of vignettes. Vilmos Zsigmond's photography is good, but too often there is too much dust and smoke everywhere that obscures the characters and locations. Also, the colors in the film are all washed out; it looks like the filmstock was left out in sun. For example, in the middle of the roller-skating scene, the color simply vanishes, leaving only light brown and black! Granted, there are a few things in the film that I admire, like David Mansfield's score. Isabelle Huppert always looks sexy even without makeup. The battle scenes are pretty exciting, although I could swear that I saw one particular wagon blow up four times. The film has a rather odd denoument that takes place on board a ship, but everything else in this movie is pretty odd. Why the studio didn't bring in another writer or two to rewrite the script is a mystery because inside this mess there was a good movie trying to get out. It's a shame that Michael Cimino still hasn't recovered from this debacle. I sure hope he makes a comeback.

The text on the back of the videobox when I rented this dirge implied that Heaven's Gate is notorious as one of the worst films ever made because the cruel studio took a masterpiece and slashed and burned it, and the critics never got to see the original, which (oh hooray!) is now available for home viewing. Actually, the critics saw the original, hated it, and then the studio tried to edit it into something watchable, which of course was impossible because the problem was not only that the film was far too long, but much of the dialogue was unintelligible, the characters were undeveloped, and the plot was tedious. Why anybody would waste any tears mourning the fate of this dreadful film and Cimino's wounded feelings is beyond my comprehension.

I have no intention of going "revisionist" here and heralding "Heaven's Gate" as some kind of murdered classic -- frankly, much of the film is too formless to rank it with the classics (and another reviewer on this site is thoroughly off the mark by comparing it to Griffith's "Intolerance.") However, this is a film that was just a little too brutally reviewed when it came out -- much of the film and its attention to detail, its awesome cinematography, its social commentary, and a surprisingly strong performance by Kris Kristofferson, make it a very watchable and powerful film. It seems that much of the prejudice against the film was based upon its price tag (small by today's standards, when one thinks of the overrated "Titanic" and the deservedly hated "Waterworld") and some sort of animosity toward Cimono, certainly an imperfect person. I would, however, recommend the film -- it is certainly better than its reputation and is, if not a classic, certainly an honorable achievement.