‘Heaven’s Gate’ or — The Potential Lethality of Unrelenting Beauty?
The opening credits finish, we fade up from black and what we proceed to witness for the next several hours are a series of breath-taking images possessed by an undeniable power in their impact and flow. What’s more, this is not just surface beauty (the ecstasy here is too embedded in the texture of what we’re seeing for that) as every shot, every movement, every moment pulls us deeper into this world and the story unfolding within. This is masterful filmmaking on a scal… Whoa! Wait a second! Isn’t this movie meant to be a load of absolute shit?! I am watching the correct film, right? Hold on, I’ll just check and yep, I’m definitely watching Michael Cimino’s ‘Heaven’s Gate’ (1980) for sure. What the hell’s going on because this is NOT what I was expecting!
I was ten when ‘Heaven’s Gate’ was released meaning I grew up in the age when Cimino’s film was the poster child for failure, hubris, disaster, disorder and fiasco. It destroyed Cimino’s career, the reputation of the studio that financed it plus the age of the director as god so it always seemed, from what I could gather, less a movie and more a badly constructed tombstone. As the years went by I read articles and interviews, watched documentaries about the making of the film and observed how recently there were mumblings and rumblings of a reappraisal, albeit far from universal. Yet, until last night, I had never actually seen the film itself, and now I have all I can say is that if ‘Heaven’s Gate’ is a disaster you can’t tell by what’s on the screen because what’s there is astonishing.
There’s a moment when the station master of Casper makes his way through his busy waiting room to greet the arriving train and when he opens the door to fully reveal the town the scale, sweep and level of textural tactility (there’s a LOT of Visconti in this picture) that assaults us is mind-blowing. How do we take it all in? Do we concentrate on the buildings, the smoke-stacks, the mass of people, the heaving locomotive or the fluttering, pink parasols in the distance that are gently consumed by a passing cloud of steam? Don’t cut! I want this moment to linger just a little longer.
And it’s not just the visuals that grip us but pay attention to the sound design and how the puffs and chugs of the engine are orchestrated with the same exacting fidelity as what we see before morphing perfectly into the following scene (it’s worth sitting through this movie with your eyes closed, if you can manage to avoid peeking, and simply listening to it because there’s a lot of sonic sophistication).
Yet what’s most arresting about it all is the palpable sense of vibrant life here and the realisation that the vitality of the picture hasn’t been beaten out of existence on the anvil of Cimino’s perfectionism.
Indeed, my main criticism is that the film might be TOO beautiful. Now I have no idea what 19th century Wyoming was actually like but if it looked even half as stunning as it does here then I’m amazed the settlers didn’t all starve to death because they were too busy wandering around in such a state of profound bliss and constantly gasping at awe at what they saw to get any real work done.
Although maybe that’s the lethal lesson contained in ‘Heaven’s Gate’ because this much bewitchment isn’t healthy and anything we find impossible to pull ourselves away from should be treated with caution, something Cimino discovered at his cost.
Fortunately the film has some flaws to save us from completely succumbing to the narcotic lotus flower of total aesthetic annihilation: the love triangle feels subsumed by its overbearing surroundings; the opening merriment of circular dancing mirrors the climactic violence a little too heavily (you can see it all coming a mile off); John Hurt swans around uselessly in a somewhat prim and prissily manner which could explain why he feels like C3-PO in ‘Attack of the Clones’ (2002), and would YOU really have time to write a love letter whilst trapped in a burning, collapsing shack?
Having finally watched ‘Heaven’s Gate’ what’s most apparent is that the critics of the time weren’t reviewing the film but Cimino, his ego and his insanely expensive working process because the movie itself is remarkable, immaculately made and neither boring, badly paced or a mess. It just cost a lot.
It’s like going to a restaurant and being served the most incredible steak you’ve ever had in your life, every bite making you swoon and groan with pleasure. Then the waiter hands you the bill which reads $75,000 and that’s when you choke to death on your final swallowing gulp. It wasn’t the food that killed you but the price-tag.
