Review of Heaven's Gate (1980) by Tom L — 13 Mar 2015

Available currently on Encore, in spite of much of the negative reception, this movie is actually worth a watch. It is not a "great" movie. But, in spite of all of its shortcomings, I actually found much of the production, cinematography, and sheer production size, especially long shots of re-recreated Wyoming, filled with hundreds if not thousands of extras, to be impressive, and reminiscent of the bygone days of director driven cinema. I remember the early 80s being filled with much more impressive and significant director opus projects (such as Reds and Ghandi), and we can perhaps blame Heavens Gate fo for the end of this era, because the movie was such a financial and critical flop, that it gave rise to the end of the directors full control of projects, moving that control over to the studios. There have been some migration back to director projects, such as the various Kostner and Gibson movies of the 90s...But, overall, the pendalum that swings between artistry and commercialism, moved over to the dark side, thanks for Ciminos failed project.

But again, with that said, it is indeed worth a watch. The sets are truly spectacular, the directing, is actually, really good, and while the film was close to 4 hours long, as was not uncommon with these directorial projects...I rarely looked at the clock. There are several scenes of characters dancing in waltz, with the camera circling around the action, swirling us in to the moment. Cimino pulled me in to these stories and characters, in that way, pure camera work and cinema artistry. So, if you've got 4 hours to burn, there are worse things you could watch.

Actually, my primary complaint with Heavens' Gate, is that with all of the effort put in to recreating this Wyoming town, and te horrible land baron vs. immigrant war reality...Unfortunately, very little of these events took place in history. The stories are very loosely based on fact, but fall short. Why put all that money, and all those resources and time and talent, into telling a story, that appears geniuine, but is in fact, total fiction and completely artificial? That's not to say that I dislike a good fiction, but the movie is disingenous in this regard. The production and recreation was again, very impressive. Too bad it wasn't used to provide us with an actual historical context of Wyoming, circa 1890s.