Cimino’s much-derided, massive financial failure of a film at the time can be appreciated today as a monumental piece of work—an ambitious, indulgent and unorthodox American Western, loosely based on the Johnson County War of 1892.
Review #2,990
Dir. Michael Cimino
1980 | USA | Drama, Western | 216min | 2.40:1 | English
M18 (passed clean) for violence, sexual scene, nudity and coarse language
Cast: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Joseph Cotten, Jeff Bridges
Plot: When a Harvard graduate relocates to Wyoming as a federal marshal, he learns of a plot to kill the area’s European settlers for their land.
Awards: Nom. for Palme d’Or (Cannes); Nom. for Art Direction-Set Decoration (Oscars)
Distributor: MGM
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Class Warfare; Discrimination of Immigrants; American History
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Criterion Blu-ray
Spoilers: No
After the success of The Deer Hunter (1978), which won the Oscar for Best Picture and got Michael Cimino his Best Director statuette, United Artists gave him carte blanche for his next project.
We now know how infamous Heaven’s Gate was as it became one of Hollywood’s worst financial disasters and spelt the death knell for studio-funded auteur-led ‘passion projects’ in the ‘80s.
We also know that it has since been reappraised, though one must recognise that while Cimino showed incredible artistry with this ambitious American Western, he wasn’t exactly a saint, such were the stories of his dictatorial treatment of his cast and crew, and his excessive spending on set.
Based loosely on the Johnson County War of 1892 in Wyoming, Heaven’s Gate screams epic from the get-go, starting with a college commencement address and a waltz-dancing celebration with hundreds of students.
Jumping twenty years later, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), part of that Harvard graduating batch and now a federal marshall, gets a whiff of a plot by a self-armed militia of cattle barons (tacitly supported by the state) who are aiming to kill the European settlers (many of them Slavs) that are farming on their open ranges.
“If the rich could hire others to do their dying for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.”
Accompanied by Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, and a scene-stealing Isabelle Huppert as Ella, a bordello madame-cum-love interest of more than one man, Heaven’s Gate is truly a feast for the eyes, such is Vilmos Zsigmond’s painterly if at times ‘dusty’ cinematography.
With the intermission removed from the Criterion edition, we get the full 216-minute director’s cut, which reveals an almost mythic-like approach to the Western with an atypical narrative structure, which by the early ‘80s heyday of the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ movies, must have felt like a sore anachronism.
In retrospect, Heaven’s Gate will thrill fans of big-scale, indulgent period filmmaking that tackles some aspects of history, class and politics; in fact, this might arguably still be the closest an American filmmaker has come to emulating Visconti, whose magnum opus, The Leopard (1963), surely had inspired Cimino.
Ignore all the bad reviews and ‘stinker awards’ it garnered in its time—the past is the past, so take a leap of faith and behold a monumental piece of work.
Grade: A
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 