Those Tireless Friends of Heaven’s Gate

When Criterion’s Heaven’s Gate Bluray came out last November I just couldn’t muster the energy to ask the Criterion publicists for a freebie. I had watched it once at the Manhattan all-media press screening in November 1980, and the memory was still fresh 32 years later. I couldn’t make myself watch it again. I just didn’t have the will.

“I was there, man,” I wrote last August. “I was in that audience [at the Cinema 1], and in all my years of watching films I have never felt such a sucking sensation in a room…a feeling of almost total inertia from the oxygen having been all but vacuumed out by a filmmaker with a ridiculous and over-indulged sense of his own vision and grandeur, and by a resultant approach to filmmaking that felt to me like some kind of pretentious waking nightmare.

“I could feel it in one of the earliest scenes, when John Hurt is addressing his graduating Harvard classmates in a cocky, impudent, self-amused fashion and Joseph Cotten (as a character called ‘Reverend Doctor’) is shown to be irked and offended by the snide and brazen tone of Hurt’s remarks, and right away I was saying to myself, ‘What is this? I can’t understand half of what Hurt is on about and I don’t give a damn why Cotten is bothered. If this is indicative of what this film will be like for the next three hours then Cimino is fucked and so am I because I have to sit here and watch it.’

“What happened? How could Cimino have made such an oppressive and impenetrable film as this? The basis of the ‘misunderstood masterpiece’ revisionism is basically about the fact that (a) it’s very pretty to look at, very pastoral and majesterial, etc., (b) it offers a severely critical view of the vicious tendencies of gangster capitalism (hence the admiration in certain lefty and left-European circles), and (c) it’s very expansive and meditative and serene in a certain 19th Century fashion. I understand how some could glom onto these three talking points and build that into a revisionist mentality.

“But don’t start up with the ‘oh, what did they know back in 1980?’ crap. They knew. I know. I was there.”

Anyway, Heaven’s Gate showed at last September’s Venice Film Festival and then the New York Film Festival and then the Bluray came out. I figured by now it would be over and done with but no. N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has written a new “let’s take another look at Heaven’s Gate” piece because it’s showing at Manhattan’s Film Forum from 3.22 to 3.28. I would love this film to go away and die in a hole in the woods, but it won’t.

Dargis: “Watching Heaven’s Gate for the first time in February I understood how it could mean so many seemingly contradictory things to so many people and why so many dissimilar conclusions could all feel true. The film’s scope, natural backdrops, massive sets, complex choreography and cinematography are seductive, at times stunning, and if you like watching swirling people and cameras, you may love it. If you insist on strong narratives, white hats and black, uniform performances, audible dialogue and a happy ending, well, you will have history and consensus on your side. (The film’s turbulent history — amazingly, given the stakes, it was yanked from distribution soon after it opened — also helped explain why I had never seen it.)”

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  • zantetsupowaa

    But how did it compare with watching The Apple?

  • erniesouchak

    I had the same feeling watching “Australia.” And just about anything Tim Burton has directed since “Ed Wood.”

  • Raising_Kaned

    Slow Saturday, huh?

    Shane and Heaven’s Gate — who says the state of modern film criticism is dying??

  • Mr Bohemian

    there is a scene in the film that has stuck with me for 33 years.

    after all most all the immigrants die the single remaining women puts a gun in her mouth and blows her head off. I like the power of cinema to create monuments we never forget. I guess the directors

    intent worked, his film made an impression on me.

    • Ray Quick

      ABSOLUTELY. This moment is the first thing I think of re: Heaven’s Gate, which is one of my favorite movies ever.

  • Trimmer

    Having never seen Heaven’s Gate before, I recently saw the restored version at the Egyptian and I was prepared to be bored out of my skull. It was definitely flawed, but it held my interest throughout. There wasn’t even an intermission yet I never left my seat. Some gorgeous cinematography as well. And young Mickey Rourke! I’ll never buy the Criterion Blu-ray but I’m glad I saw it in a big theater.

  • http://twitter.com/TVMCCA Terry McCarty

    I was kind of disappointed that there wasn’t an F.X. Feeney commentary on the Criterion disc. Also remembering an interview Cimino gave in 1981 to Greg Jackson on the short-lived CBS Cable arts network–too bad it wasn’t included. I think the show was titled THE LAST WORD.

  • http://twitter.com/TVMCCA Terry McCarty

    Correcting my previous post–the Greg Jackson interview show was titled SIGNATURE, airing in February 1982. IMDB on the Cimino episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1388249/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1329069668 Brian Bouton

    As a kid, I grew up hearing echoes of “Heaven’s Gate” in popular culture used as shorthand for a cinematic bomb. I confused the film with “Heaven Can Wait” which was always on cable and wondered why such an enjoyable film was hated so much.

  • Joe Gillis

    Jeff, does the possibility that you may be wrong ever occur to you? Having seen Heaven’s Gate at the Egyptian two months ago, I found it absolutely stunning. Thirty-three years after seeing it you still find the need to bash it over the head even though it appears time has been much kinder to it than many other films of its era.

  • Bobby Cooper

    From “Textural Incoherence” IMDB thread:

    I think this movie can get overwhelming for viewers due to its “texture” and thus come across as incoherent… But each of the main characters and even most of the supporting ones have quite finely drawn arcs straight out of a novel — they give the story its through line if you’re willing to look. They’re all biding time before the last judgment comes in the form of hired killers and a supportive national guard.

    Cimino built it to be big and dense — first 2/3rds all tick-of-the-clock set up, final 3rd all disorienting climax.

  • http://twitter.com/Glenn__Kenny Glenn Kenny

    That “I was there, man” reminds me that Wells really needs to work out the rest of his Weird Al/cinephile version of LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge”

  • http://twitter.com/jasctt Jason T.

    I’d love to hear the talk when Wells knocks up Criterion for free BDs. I wonder if they draw straws or rock, paper, scissors to decide who has to take that call or answer that email.

  • http://twitter.com/jasctt Jason T.

    HG’s always struck me as being a “flawed classic.” Think 1900. Too long but a wonder to behold.

  • pjm

    Some movies are just plain bad, and this is one of them. It never recovers from the endless “Harvard” sequence (which, of course, looks nothing like Harvard, since it was shot in Oxford for some insane reason). It all hinges on whether or not you feel Kristofferson’s growing empathy for the immigrants, and there’s no way that you do. He’s supposed to be transformed into a class traitor, but when did we ever see him revel in his elite pedigree? From the minute he leaves Harvard he’s a man of the people The next four hours are just an interminable wait for him to start shooting the capitalist pigs as you admire Zsigmond’s work.

    • hupto

      (aka Cadavra)
      No insane reason. Harvard refused to give them permission to shoot on campus. So they went elsewhere. Turned out it was cheaper to shoot at Oxford than here.

  • punkedup

    The opening scene with Walken killing the the father is wrenching and beautifully shot. There’s some kind of raw crazed vitality to the whole film. Worth debating. But it’s not a disaster.

  • zantetsupowaa

    Speaking of artsy ego flops from 1980, when are they going to re-evaluate Caligula?

  • chien_clean

    Discussing Cinema over the years, I find there’s nothing worse that Heaven’s Gate Apologists. It’s like having a son who’s a serial killer and saying “but he’s such a good boy…!”.