Having just walked out of a theater showing Cimino's full original cut, including intermission, I can say that this film is a remarkable achievement and possibly one of the greatest crimes in American Cinema has been perpetrated around this film.
This is what the term "epic" was made for.
Love, war, friendship, betrayal, villainy, heroism-- this one has it all on a grand scale. Most of all it has a director with the patience to let scenes play themselves out and actually sink in, under the audience's skin. I can't think of another movie in the past 20 years that has so patiently and subtly revealed its characters lives.
In other words, today, it doesn't stand a chance.
I'm just as guilty as the next viewer of loving the quick moving jump cuts and I'll slap my $10 down on a 90-minute blockbuster as quickly as the next guy. But I really think this is what theaters were built for: gorgeous cinematography splashed across the big screen; a luscious score booming through the theater and performances that never ceased to satisfy. And Christopher Walken in a multilayered role that could be described in some ways as a good guy? Come on! This is why we don't simply wait for Netflix to deliver the next pile of DVDs to our mail box.
Heaven's Gate was quite simply destroyed by a horrible cut that cast the movie in the worst possible light, delivering an incomprehensible mess to American theaters and to a movie-going audience that was already primed to dislike it by the endless stories about its (gasp!) $40 million budget. In the context of a gas shortage and recession and hostage crisis its excesses were repellant and the critics savaged it. Practically cut in half, it made no sense, and how could it have? It seemed poorly edited-- of course.
One scene in the movie shows a group of well-heeled men preparing to vote on taking an action of monstrous evil against a town. One man stands and appeals to reason and morality but its clear that the mob mentality is about to take over. One by one in line, any man who might have been thinking wiser of it falls blindly in line with the masses.
Such was the case of critics of this film. Even to this day it's far from hip to praise "Heaven's Gate." What a sad state of affairs. See it as it was intended by Cimino on the big screen (it's playing film festivals) and then come back with a review. Anything less is a different movie.
Judging from the audience reaction at today's screening and the sidewalk discussions outside the theater (and during intermission), Seattle would have given this the Academy Award. One must wonder if Cimino has to pass away before people see this gorgeous epic for what it really is: possibly one of the greatest achievements in American cinema. Breathtaking.
This is what the term "epic" was made for.
Love, war, friendship, betrayal, villainy, heroism-- this one has it all on a grand scale. Most of all it has a director with the patience to let scenes play themselves out and actually sink in, under the audience's skin. I can't think of another movie in the past 20 years that has so patiently and subtly revealed its characters lives.
In other words, today, it doesn't stand a chance.
I'm just as guilty as the next viewer of loving the quick moving jump cuts and I'll slap my $10 down on a 90-minute blockbuster as quickly as the next guy. But I really think this is what theaters were built for: gorgeous cinematography splashed across the big screen; a luscious score booming through the theater and performances that never ceased to satisfy. And Christopher Walken in a multilayered role that could be described in some ways as a good guy? Come on! This is why we don't simply wait for Netflix to deliver the next pile of DVDs to our mail box.
Heaven's Gate was quite simply destroyed by a horrible cut that cast the movie in the worst possible light, delivering an incomprehensible mess to American theaters and to a movie-going audience that was already primed to dislike it by the endless stories about its (gasp!) $40 million budget. In the context of a gas shortage and recession and hostage crisis its excesses were repellant and the critics savaged it. Practically cut in half, it made no sense, and how could it have? It seemed poorly edited-- of course.
One scene in the movie shows a group of well-heeled men preparing to vote on taking an action of monstrous evil against a town. One man stands and appeals to reason and morality but its clear that the mob mentality is about to take over. One by one in line, any man who might have been thinking wiser of it falls blindly in line with the masses.
Such was the case of critics of this film. Even to this day it's far from hip to praise "Heaven's Gate." What a sad state of affairs. See it as it was intended by Cimino on the big screen (it's playing film festivals) and then come back with a review. Anything less is a different movie.
Judging from the audience reaction at today's screening and the sidewalk discussions outside the theater (and during intermission), Seattle would have given this the Academy Award. One must wonder if Cimino has to pass away before people see this gorgeous epic for what it really is: possibly one of the greatest achievements in American cinema. Breathtaking.