Heaven’s Gate

(1980) dir. Michael Cimino
viewed: 06/23/07

I’d been interested in this film for years, one of the greatest Hollywood box office bombs, a failure that destroyed United Artists and changed the free rein that major American directors had grappled for in the 1970′s, it is cited as the catalyst for this wave of change.  It killed director Michael Cimino’s career, which was somewhat short-lived anyways.  After watching the fascinating documentary, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004), about the short lived but inspired cable network that was curated by Jerry Harvey, who had impeccable taste in films, and launched the resurrected “director’s cut” when that concept had real teeth.  Harvey was a huge champion of Cimino and one of the most significant films that Harvey “re-discovered” was Heaven’s Gate, which ended up fascinating me.

The film, which was so legendary in its failure, can be seen with fresh eyes these days, I think.  It’s quite excellent, I would say.  Based on events known as the Johnson County War, a notable crisis in the days of the Wild West, when a group of gentrified land-owners and cattle barons, enraged by cattle thieves, new waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and targeted them with an army of vigilantes to hunt them down and kill them.  Some early interpretations of this event sided with the land owners as heroes of American rights but Cimino clearly sees this group as the evil heartless corporate gang that victimized the poor.  Explicity, it was a class war.

The film is epic; its original cut that Cimino brought in was over 5 hours, but this version is the 3 1/2 hour version that was initially released, known now as the “director’s cut”, which was also repealed after its release and a very short, badly edited version was then released.  It’s long.  But I have to say, having just watched El Topo (1970), it felt much more reasonable.

The cast is pretty amazing, Kris Kristofferson, Jeff Bridges, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, and Joseph Cotton.  Sam Watterson is pretty damn unlikeable as the primary leader of the pack of land owners.  And there are some interesting cameos from Mickey Rourke and Willem Defoe.  It’s also beautifully shot, against the Montana mountains and landscapes, often hazing out into near sepia-toned imagery.

The Western is an excellent genre for analyzing culture of its time, its interpretation of history, its meanings and intentions.  Heaven’s Gate is truly a solid and remarkable Western, epic in scope, epic in its production, epic in its commercial and critical failure, epic in its destruction in the filmmaking industry, and yet, it seems it was reviled quite wrongly, though one can only imagine the megalomania of Cimino, as directors so often get to in fighting for the visions of their masterpieces and the battle to make interesting or important films in the Hollywood of any time.