Heaven's Gate

It is a demanding film, without a doubt – but a passionate one.

It's a film of rare beauty and scope, a feast for the eyes and a harrowing, unflinching meditation on the cruelty of capitalism. It rivals William Friedkin's Sorceror in its bone-deep cynicism and eviscerating take on the free market's coal-black heart of darkness.

A grandiose Western based on the Johnson County War of 1892, when cattle barons brought in mercenaries to massacre immigrant settlers, it suffers badly from narrative incoherence. But there’s a grand romantic sweep to the action (enacted by a solid cast including Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert), the set-pieces are majestic and its disenchanted view of the American frontier myth still rings ominously true.

The story is both slow moving and hard to follow, but the locations and period details offer plenty to ponder.

The first scenes of Heaven’s Gate are so energetic and beautiful that anyone who knows the saga of the $35 million epic might begin to think it was going to be worth every penny. Unfortunately the balance of director Michael Cimino’s film is so confusing, so overlong at three-and-a-half hours and so ponderous that it fails to work at almost every level.

Well, it really is a stinker, a compendium of The Deer Hunter's weaknesses (of plotting, narration, dialogue, and character) with few of its lyrical strengths.

Nothing in the movie works properly. For all of the time and money that went into it, it's jerry-built, a ship that slides straight to the bottom at its christening. Heaven's Gate is something quite rare in movies these days - an unqualified disaster.

Heaven's Gate lives up to its reputation of being one of the worst films of all time. However, is it a perfect zero? I don't think so. There are some good performances scattered throughout the star studded ensemble cast, and the soundtrack is pretty good. There are even some really beautiful shots. The problem with Heaven's Gate lies solely on the the direction. The Deer Hunter, this ain't. There is absolutely no focus on anything happening in this movie. The plot is so confusing and underexplained I had no idea what was happening onscreen. The only thing I was able to discern is that Kris Kristofferson is the main character. Where The Deer Hunter was tightly focused, the sprawl of Heaven's Gate is difficult to wade through, particularly at a nearly 4 hour run time. At least the nearly 4 hour runtime version makes a little more sense. God help you if you watch the 2 hour version. If you are curious about film history, the death of United Artists, the death of naturalism in film, and the death of Michael Cimino's career, and the reason we have "No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Movie" then I cannot recommend Heaven's Gate enough.