[4]

I’d never seen Heaven’s Gate until recently. For decades, it has been the title synonymous with “flop” and studio bankruptcy, but it has also been picked back up, reexamined, and declared somewhat of an artistic treasure in recent years. The story centers around a bloody ongoing battle in 1890s Wyoming between rich cattle barons and struggling immigrant settlers. The settlers steal cattle to feed their farm animals, and the cattle owners get even by killing the settlers. Writer/director Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) tries to make this an epic, sprawling, big-time historic love letter of a movie, but it’s… it’s just boring as fuck, folks.

Yes, Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is incredible. Truly, it is. But it can’t carry the movie. And neither can the ecclectic and talented cast, which includes Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Brad Dourif, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Sam Waterston, and Jeff Bridges — all people I love seeing in movies (except for Kristofferson). But nothing can save this movie from the curse of its interminable length and languid pacing. The pacing undercuts any and every possibility of dramatic tension or sense of escalating action. The film plateaus very early on, and goes nowhere — emotionally or viscerally. Cimino gives all sorts of cinematic love and attention to big crowd scenes, especially inside the film’s eponymous roller rink location, but love scenes are shot from passionless angles (perhaps on purpose), and action scenes (what few there are) have no driving force behind them — they’re just piles of shots that go on without a point until they don’t anymore, running horse after running horse, gunshot after gunshot, more stampeding horses, blah, blah, blah.

I was sure Heaven’s Gate had to be a misunderstood masterpiece of some sort. But 1980’s audiences had it right the first time. In many ways, the film is a lot like Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. It works best as a pretty screen saver.

With Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Tom Noonan, and Mickey Rourke.

Oscar Nomination: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration