"Heaven´s Gate" is by far not the disaster its contemporary critics condemned it to be. And its by far not the pristine achievement its defenders want us to believe. As a movie, it has too many sequences that drag, to many "lyrical" moments that are great to watch but a major violation of the film´s momentum and too many actors evidently not knowing where they are (leading players Kris Kristofferson and John Hurt pitifully among them). But it features Isabelle Hupperts still best performance in a non-french-language movie, one of Jeff Bridges finest performances and a storyline that is willfully political, anti-establishment and anti-Reagan. In fact Cimino seems at times more concerned with the contemporary overtones of his film than with the historic tragedy itself. Coming from a director who just two years before that had made the most conservative and pro-american film about the Vietnam experience (not about the war!), who ran away with the major Academy Awards for doing so, and who had - not to forget - co-written the Dirty-Harry-sequel "Magnum Force" together with John Milius of all people, "Heaven´s Gate" must have come as a surprise with some impact. Being released in the launching stages of what was to become the Reagan-era, both Cimino and the film were dutifully punished for their conduct unbecoming. "Heaven´s Gate" was resurrected as the flawed masterpiece it is at the Cannes film festival four years later. Michael Cimino still hasn´t recovered from the massive blows his career had to take.
Review of Heaven's Gate
