Heaven's Gate

[D-Man]

Out of sheer curiosity, I decided to put this famous Hollywood bomb on my Netflix queue.  I got it yesterday, and watched clear up to the intermission...and frankly I'm not sure if I want to go any further. 

It's a gorgeous film to look at, sets and cinematography and all, but I just get the feeling that it's all style and little substance.  Sure, you've got some hackneyed, dramatized political account of some class warfare that allegedly went on in the old west, but stretching that out into a nearly four hour film is exhausting.  Sam Waterston makes a great villain, but I've hardly seen much of him so far.  Ditto Christopher Walken, who's been mostly MIA in what I've seen.

My main 3 problems with this film:

- It takes an eternity just to get one plot point across, then seems to repeat the theme over and over.
- Isabelle Huppert, a French actress, playing a character named Ella Watson, french accent and all...what the hell is up with that?
- Why oh why am I hearing mandolin music in a Western? (At least I think that's what it is)  That just doesn't fit for me.   

[trekgeezer]

This is the movie that bankrupted MGM and ended the glory days of directors having complete control over the content of their films.

[D-Man]

Actually, it was UA that this film bankrupted, and it was sold to MGM not long after.  It's a shame, because UA was a very unique studio among all the others.  Dreamworks tried to emulate them in a way, I think, but they're owned by Paramount now, of course, so there goes that dream. 

I don't know what it is about Michael Cimino's work that bores me, outside of The Deer Hunter.  I remember seeing another one of his films, "Year of The Dragon", for a race relations and film class I was taking in college.  I nearly fell asleep multiple times while watching that one. 

I guess I'm irked by the fact that the man was detail obsessed to a fault.  He just seemed to always be filming this excess stuff just for the sake of filming it and showing it off.  He was always like "Ok, our characters have to accomplish this, but first let's put them in some meaningless side activity that goes on for about 10 minutes."

Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the powerful directors that came out of the 70's, like Coppola and De Palma.  But those were directors who also cared about actors, and characters as well as cinematography.  Michael Cimino...in his own way, he cared more about the look than he did the characters, I think.  What helped with the Deer Hunter, was that he had Robert De Niro in that one. 

[raj]

Back when it was a tv channel, Trio did a program on Heaven's Gate.  Apparently it is well regarded in Europe.  But yeah, Cimino's ego got far in the way of this film.  Oh, and IIRC, he was having an affair with Isabelle Huppert at the time.

[Rev. Powell]

So D-Man, did you ever finish it?  It doesn't get any better in the second half.  I think the best thing that can be said about this movie is that it will totally erase itself from your memory five minutes after you have finished watching it.  I made it through and to this day I could not tell you one thing about what happened (assuming something happened).  You won't have to live with the pain forever, like some bad movies.

[D-Man]

Nah, I sent it back today.  I just decided I couldn't take anymore. 

[Torgo]

Great to look at, but excruciating to make it through the film as the plot, character motivations and point of the movie is completely muddled beyond belief.

[asimpson2006]

I did finish it, but it took me several months to actually watch it.  I had some time off from work in the summer so I decided to finish it, and then it took me the better part of a week to watch it because I could only watch about 5 to 10 min at a time before I was bored out of my mind.

There is some violence, but it's too little too late IMO.

[Neville]

I watched it a few years ago, at a time when I was disilusioned with regular movies. It was a very interesting experience, and I'll say with all honesty that I enjoyed it inmensely.

Now, I did enjoy it because I was tired of conventional movies, not because it is, strictly speaking, any good. When you've seen thousands of movies where every single frame and sentence of dialogue is there for a reason, watching a film that consciously despises all those conventions can be a very rewarding experience.

While I watched the film I couldn't but notice that almost every scene was, plotwise, completely unnecesary. Really, you could recut the whole film so that the story is told in 20 minutes or less. But still the film is so beautifully composed, filmed and played that you can watch it just for the sake of it, not caring at all about stories, characters or subplots. It's so bizarre that it's appealing in some sort of twisted way. I remember watching Harvard graduates celebrate for what looked like 10 minutes, and laughing out laud because nobody was trying to make sense of it.

I've never recommeded this film to anybody. I'm not sure at all if anybody with a different mindset than I had that particular day would be able to enjoy it. And I was in a very rare mood those days.

[Rev. Powell]

Neville, I am impressed.  You are the exalted Zen master of bad movie watching.  To find the entertainment value in Heaven's Gate is like glimpsing the universe in a grain of sand.

[Neville]

Thanks for the kudos, but it was only a one-time incident. Whatever took control of me in that occassion, it hasn't been there on the other many occurrences I was in need of it.

And there have been too many.