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Kris Kristofferson,
Kris Kristofferson,
Christopher Walken,
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Michael Cimino,
Michael Cimino
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: MGM
: Politics and Social Issues, Westerns
: 219 min.
: English
: Spanish, French
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A notorious artistic and financial failure, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate was blamed for critically wounding the movie Western and definitively ushering out the 1970s Hollywood New Wave of young, brash, independent filmmakers. Taking a revisionist, post-Vietnam view of American imperialism, Cimino used the historical Johnson County War incident in Wyoming to create an impressionistic tapestry of Western conflict between poor immigrant settlers and rich cattle barons led by Canton (Sam Waterston) and his hired gun Nate Champion (Christopher Walken). Attempting to mediate is idealistic Harvard graduate and county marshal Averill (Kris Kristofferson), who is both Nate's friend and his romantic rival for the affections of Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). However, war erupts, at great cost to all involved. Flush from his success with the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter (1978), Cimino demanded creative control, and his insistence on shooting on location and building historically accurate sets and props multiplied the film's original budget to a then-astronomical $36 million. When United Artists premiered the original 219-minute version (sight unseen), they discovered that Cimino had produced an elliptical epic, compounding the box-office difficulties of making a Western without any major stars. Critics howled about Cimino's incomprehensible self-indulgence, and United Artists pulled the film after several days. Re-released five months later, 70 minutes shorter, Heaven's Gate bombed again, and MGM bought out the financially crippled United Artists. The ailing Western genre virtually vanished during the 1980s, Cimino's career never recovered, and Hollywood studios had had enough of bankrolling financially risky ventures by "auteur" directors. Heaven's Gate's reputation recovered somewhat after its video release, as it garnered praise from some viewers for such visually remarkable sequences as the Harvard dance and the final battle, as well as for David Mansfield's haunting score. Steven Bach's book Final Cut provides a full production history. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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by Lastcrackerjack
April 14, 2006 - 10:04 PM PDT
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3 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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Writer and director Michael Cimino surpassed his Best Picture Oscar winner "The Deer Hunter" in terms of vision, writing, cinematography, casting, musical score and editing, which all come together in an epic of brilliant, haunting imagery. Even with a running time of 3 hours 39 minutes, this is a masterpiece in lyrical beauty that is approached by few other films.
With a cast that also included Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterson, Brad Dourif, Richard Mazur, Geoffrey Lewis and Mickey Rourke, Cimino succeeds in writing both character and dialogue (dialogue was all but absent from "The Deer Hunter") of real pathos and complexity.
The cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond captures some of the most beautiful imagery ever put on film. Not only is the lighting gorgeous, but the camera movement - with sweeping dolly shots, never any handheld - is audacious. Cimino's location scouts once again found the perfect mountain wilderness and lakes to put on film and Zsigmond lenses them boldly.
The "cast of thousands" are put to jaw-dropping use here - in an era before digital compositing no less - most notably in the Harvard prologue and our arrival in Casper, Wyoming. No movie has ever recreated a bygone urban area with the detail and epic scope of this film, not even "Gangs of New York". The money is on the screen.
Heaven's Gate is a reception hall which plays host to the film's best sequence - a town "dance" in which villagers don roller skates. This may sound goofy, but the dance is wonderfully choreographed. The musical score by David Mansfield is hands down the finest written for a western ever. Mansfield himself plays the fiddle player the camera follows as he skates around the hall.
Kristofferson & Huppert adjourn from the dance to share a conversation while looking out across one of those gorgeous glass lakes that Cimino seems so fond of. When they return to the hall, it's emptied, and the two share a dance in what caps off a sequence of amazing lighting, art direction, music, choreography and acting.
The climactic gun battle is exciting, but gunfights are really the least interesting thing in the movie. The illumination of a darker chapter of U.S. history than is usually revealed in the western genre, and the framing of those events with incredibly textured and beautiful imagery is the real reason to see Heavens Gate.
In 100 years, I doubt anyone will be able to believe the hate leveled against this film or understand why Cimino was barely heard from again.
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 6.56)
54 Votes
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