Blu-ray Review Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Richard--W]

The blu-ray takes some getting used to. It looks spectacular, but I have to adjust to the new densities and color timing.
Can a transfer be too sharp? So sharp that it exposes the tools of the trade?. I never realized that dirt had been spread over the cobblestone streets at Harvard. I thought it was real dirt.

 

[Matt Hough]

The blu-ray takes some getting used to. It looks spectacular, but I have to adjust to the new densities and color timing.
Can a transfer be too sharp? So sharp that it exposes the tools of the trade?. I never realized that dirt had been spread over the cobblestone streets at Harvard. I thought it was real dirt.

Of course, Harvard was actually filmed at Oxford.

 

[benbess]

MattH: Great review. Thanks. I think I'd also rate this one in the high middle somewhere, maybe 3.5 stars out of of 5. It has elements of greatness in it, but it also has serious flaws.
To me one of the most important things about the film is that when it flopped so badly it was said that the Western died. Like with Mark Twain, rumors of the death were a bit exaggerated, but it was certainly the end of an era. After Heaven the number of real Hollywood Westerns (Cowboys and Aliens, Back to the Future 3, etc., don't quite count imho) can probably be placed in an egg box. Well, maybe there are more than a dozen good and notable titles since 1980, but not a lot more than that. Back in the 1950s there might be around a dozen Westerns released in a single year.
Flawed as it is, if I were trying to teach someone about the Western with, say, 15 of most important titles from the 1920s till today, this one might make the list. But then again I'm a bit of a sucker for ambitious epics, even if they are flawed and maybe in need of some editing.

 

[benbess]

PS I still have vivid memories of the year this film came out. I thought the trailer was impressive, and I definitely wanted to see it. But then it crashed and burned, and even Siskel and Ebert said (iirc) that there was no point in seeing this disaster of a movie. There's so much junk in any given year, that I still feel the total disdain heaped on Heaven's Gate was a bit uncalled for....But 40 million was an awful lot back in 1980, something like $110 million today. But now, 32 years later, we every year have $200 million dollar CGI superhero movies that are a lot less worthy than this film imho....

 

[James David Walley]

Well, enough is enough, as they say. I have always felt, and have said before on HTF, that inside the rather obese movie of Heaven's Gate, there is a much slimmer one struggling to get out. Make no mistake, it would still be a long movie; and perhaps Cimino at this point in time, lacks the materials to fully create that version. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that for his director's cut he chose to recommit himself to the original flawed version rather than to slim down, straighten out the narrative kinks, reduce some of the roles – in particular Jeff Bridges' role, which really should be a minor one. Do that, and he would have given us a classic vision of the real west – the west that was made by immigrants, rather than men on horses with guns.

It sounds much like the shorter-by-over-an-hour general-release version that came out in early 1981. I saw that version, and it not only was seriously disjointed, but actually felt longer because of it. It was a revelation seeing the uncut version for the first time -- sure, it was long and meandering, but it actually felt like it was telling a coherent story, which the shorter version didn't.
I must admit, as if it wasn't obvious, that I don't share Matt's opinion of Heaven's Gate, and would have no qualms about giving it four stars at least. I would note, however, that whatever your opinion of the film itself, the Criterion Blu-Ray is a revelation -- the first time in home video that it's looked like what I saw in the theater (granted, in its abbreviated version) thirty-plus years ago. If anyone here has only encountered this film in the form of the MGM DVD (where the soft, washed-out sepia tone was, amusingly, explained by reviewers as a deliberate choice by Cimino to recreate the look of early photographs, when it was no such thing), they owe it to themselves to at least rent this new Blu-Ray to see what Heaven's Gate was supposed to be like.

 

[James David Walley]

Thank you for the review, which I think is fair. I am, alas, not tempted to buy it. If I want a beautifully photographed film set in roughly the same period but with a vacuous plot, I can always watch Days of Heaven, which must be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Before anyone flames me, ask yourself if you could sit through either Heaven's Gate of Days of Heaven if it weren't for the cinematography.

This strikes me as a rather odd opinion. Not only do I disagree about your "vacuous plot" comment, I really don't get the "set in roughly the same period." Aside from excellent imagery and one word in the title, I don't see much of a connection between the two. Historically, there's a huge gulf between the final days of the settling of the west in the early 1880s and the world of migrant farm workers in the Texas panhandle just before World War I. To put it in terms with which we're familiar, it's a little like trying to tie together Mad Men and Easy Rider.

 

[Robin9]

Days of Heaven, IMHO, was one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Photographed beautifully, yes, but just a crashing bore. Once again, JMO.

Not just your opinion. Many agree with you.

 

[theonemacduff]

I saw the abbreviated version when it played my home city for about two weeks, to mostly empty houses. My memory of it is extremely spotty, so I don't want to risk any extensive comments or description, but yes, I do recall there was material in there that's not in the long version, mostly different transitions I think. And yes, it felt disjointed. Maybe there never was any way to make the edited version I've been dreaming of for so long, and what we have is all that we can have. No work of art is ever perfect, I would argue, and this one is a long way short of perfection. But it has astounding stuff in it, and an ending that is not so much a head-scratcher, as a challenge to the audience to rethink everything that went before. I agree with the post above, that Cimino tends to leave the audience to fill things in; he doesn't overtly signal stuff the way regular commercial films tend to do, so it's a very different viewing experience than one is used to, more European (!) so to speak. I should say that I still love this film, with all its flaws. And just in passing, I agree with other posters that Days of Heaven is also somewhat overdone, but then I have always had problems with Malick's work, his stunning Badlands excepted. Thin Red Line I thought was particularly awful, a bit of an existential cheat, and with seriously silly ideas about the the Japanese army (not to mention the "noble savages"). The Pacific offers a much better take on that theatre of war.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Just pulling your leg, guys by being a little more outrageous than my true feelings. The winking emoticon was meant to be a hint!
Truthfully, I don't think I could sit through either Days of Heaven or Heaven's Gate unless they were so beautifully filmed. Had the cinematography been only average, I'd have given up on Days of Heaven and fallen asleep in Heaven's Gate. But with the excellent cinematography, both are worth watching.

Of course, Harvard was actually filmed at Oxford.

It was indeed. In fact, I was at Oxford University at the time and I knew a couple of students who got parts as extras (it was shot during Oxford's Long Vac, aka the break from teaching from June to October). FWIW, the shooting schedule was cut back considerably from the original plans, so that the students ended up with far less money than they had hoped. There were some grumblings about this in the student newspapers when the next term started.

I've never cared for Malick, save Badlands, a film he's made that I believe has both style and substance.

Agreed.

 

[Brianruns10]

I recall reading somewhere that the very first shot of the film was a stolen one...Cimino wanted to open on that particular steeple, and he couldn't get the permission needed. So they did it on the sly early one morning, laying down the dirt to make the road seem unpaved, grabbed the shot, then cleaned the place up and hustled away.

 

[rsmithjr]

Perhaps the film could have been shorter. However, there are two problems with this.
1. I am not sure that this could have been fixed in post or even near the end of principal photography. The problem is that everything about the film seems tor require the kind of "rhythm" that it has. Scene after scene just takes the time that it takes. Starts with the script certainly.
2. Even if you could cut it, I am not sure that I would want to. It certainly is slow moving, but I think that is really part of the point of the whole thing. You are supposed to be immersed in it, to be swallowed by its bigness. "The western is about loss" someone said, and this one really brings a sense of longing and sadness.
If I could do one thing for the film, I would have had it photographed in 70mm. I have the feeling that the extra detail and grandness of vision would have helped the story.
I saw the Blu-ray last night. The color is much improved, gets rid of the idea that it was supposed to be sepia-colored. While browns and oranges still predominate, other colors are now natural and vivid. The sound is also much improved, and the audibility of the dialogue is better. [That was always a problem with the film that everyone acknowledged.]
Still one of the great epic movies and great westerns. Excellent cast, fine musical score, photography should have won an Oscar, all departments working overtime to make something special.
Only problems: 1) almost no one saw it, and 2) of those who did, many did not like or understand it.
Thanks to Criterion for giving posterity this film. Let's hope that it does find its audience.

 

[theonemacduff]

Agreed with almost everything in Robert's post above; very fair-minded. For myself, I still pull out the DVD every couple of years and watching it through, so yes, it pulls you in. But I think Matt nailed it in his tagline – an epic without a center. On whether Heaven's Gate killed the western, as some have said, I believe that every decade has its great western, that is, that the genre is "rediscovered" every few years and rethought (I'm not counting Cowboys and Aliens, even though I enjoyed it), as witness Lonesome Dove in the 80s and Unforgiven in the 90s.

 

[Richard--W]

...
If I could do one thing for the film, I would have had it photographed in 70mm. I have the feeling that the extra detail and grandness of vision would have helped the story. ...

If i could do one thing for the film, I'd turn the rough draft into a finished script. The script is a mess. And the director has no idea how to fix it. I would restructure slightly, move the plot logically along, refine the subtext so that it supports the clear text, and give him a story he knows how to direct. Cimino has no idea what some of these scenes are about, and neither do the actors who struggle with it.

 

[AdrianTurner]

If I could do one thing for the film, I would have had it photographed in 70mm. I have the feeling that the extra detail and grandness of vision would have helped the story.

You're right . . . I completely agree. However, Cimino did tell me that the last sequence was shot on 65mm. I also agree with a previous poster about Kris Kristofferson - he simply doesn't carry the picture. I really feel it needed someone like Robert Redford - the character does end up as a sort of Gatsby figure.
I've found the discussion here contrasting Cimino with Malick very interesting - it seems to me that Badlands and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot are both fairly conventional, linear stories, designed in part to make a mark for debutant directors. Then you get Days of Heaven and The Deer Hunter/Heaven's Gate when narrative becomes less important than tone . . . Malick's return was Heaven's Gate in the South-West Pacific but far, far more pretentious. And while Cimino returned to more conventional movies like the kinetic Year of the Dragon, The Desperate Hours, The Sicilian and Sunchaser, Malick went into the deeper reaches of twaddledom, reaching some sort of nadir with The Tree of Life which is quite the worst film I have seen in a very long time. Surely now Hollywood won't be fooled any longer by Malick's claims to be an artistic genius.
Cimino is simply a sad loss to us all.

 

[Dick]

Surely now Hollywood won't be fooled any longer by Malick's claims to be an artistic genius.
Cimino is simply a sad loss to us all.

Well, we could bounce this back and forth for a while, but my impression is that Malick (who I met at a local showing of DAYS OF HEAVEN) never claimed to be an artistic genius -- I don't think it is in his blood to even think he is. He has found a niche, a true style, which too many hack directors couldn't hope to find within their dumb-as-doorknobs action thrillers. He is a divisive director, but many of the best have been, are, and will be in the future. You now attend a Malick film knowing what you are in for in terms of pacing and dialog, although he still surprises with editorial choices and consistently insists upon idyllic camerawork (not a bad thing for a motion picture, I would say). I am an exception here in that I did not care at all for BADLANDS (I walked out on it with my fiance when it was first released). I love the style he developed and nurtured beginning with HEAVEN. So, with this director, it is 100% a matter of one's personal taste and temperment.

 

[cineMANIAC]

So, bottom line, is Heaven's Gate actually a good film or are people buying it out of curiosity? I love the Western genre, but I feel that Westerns were pretty much dead by the time this film was released in 1980. On top of that, you've got the "controversy" over the film's reputation as the big flop that nearly bankrupted the studio, which isn't giving me a whole lotta confidence to make a blind-buy. On a level of 1 to 10, what is the entertainment value of the film? If I'm gonna drop $30 I want to enjoy a good story, not gawk at the imperfections.

 

[Peter Neski]

Badlands and Days of heaven are two on my list of Fav films,But he changed his style,now, with his ever moving steadycam films which
really don't grab me as much anymore ,
This negative thread about Heavens Gate is no surprised to me,its the same stuff over and over ,the stuff in the original reviews
I don't agree with much of it,Of course I seen the film many many times ,and really like the heart of the actors ,and the passion
they put into their roles,,It not a perfect film (like Badlands) But there is plenty to like about the film,The Visuals are really special
and they do matter!!.Its not just Vimos great work ,Storaro did a wonderful job on Reds,yet visually its no where near Heavens Gate
because the director has no eye,Yet I still like Reds a lot and find other things about it to like,few movies are like Kane where
everything is perfect

 

[Vincent_P]

Kind of bizarre how a thread re: the Blu-ray of HEAVEN'S GATE has turned into a "Let's bash Terrence Malick" thread. For the record, I love THE TREE OF LIFE and don't think that I was "fooled" into loving it.
Vincent

 

[Ruz-El]

Originally Posted by Vincent_P /t/325324/michael-ciminos-heavens-gate-blu-ray-review/30#post_4004444
Kind of bizarre how a thread re: the Blu-ray of HEAVEN'S GATE has turned into a "Let's bash Terrence Malick" thread. For the record, I love THE TREE OF LIFE and don't think that I was "fooled" into loving it.
Vincent

I agree completely with you on Tree Of Life. The closest film we've gotten to pure poetry since Sunrise:A Song of Two Humans. I would argue that his The Thin Red Line has nothing to do with the pacific theater of WWII other then being a setting to explore other things.

 

[Dick]

So, bottom line, is Heaven's Gate actually a good film or are people buying it out of curiosity? I love the Western genre, but I feel that Westerns were pretty much dead by the time this film was released in 1980. On top of that, you've got the "controversy" over the film's reputation as the big flop that nearly bankrupted the studio, which isn't giving me a whole lotta confidence to make a blind-buy. On a level of 1 to 10, what is the entertainment value of the film? If I'm gonna drop $30 I want to enjoy a good story, not gawk at the imperfections.

It isn't a terrible film, and as I mentioned above, the Criterion transfer makes it quite watchable, whereas (at my local cinema in 1978, at least), it looked terrible and seemed to drag on and on. Cimino has cut the intermission from this Blu-ray, but at home we can pause or stop any damn time we please or watch it straight through, so that isn't a big deal. The colors are now rich and often beautiful, where before they were just awful (I always pondered how it was that Zigmond had made the uncharacteristic decision to render so much of the film brown and yellow and unpleasant, but now I realize the film was made to look this way in post-production). I credit Cimino with correcting the color for this release, even if without Zigmond's participation.
Story-wise, it is problematic, but has its merits. The characters are unfortunately not well-written enough to involve their audiences. There is little nuance and almost no arch, and the chemistry between them is superficial at best. This was Cimino's most egregious shortcoming, in both his writing and his directing. If one cannot give a damn about who is who and what/why they do what they do, why stretch a film to a 3 1/2 hour length? The film feels interminable (yes, I saw the 149-minute cut, and it was not only incomprehensable, but remained interminable). We cared about the characters in THE DEER HUNTER. the script allowed for development and insight, both of which are completely lacking in HEAVEN'S GATE. This is a perfect example of a a man with an enormous ego, stroked by an Oscar, coming to believe that everything he writes or directs is henceforth going to be irrefutably genius. Farewell, United Artists. He, unlike the much less talented Michael Bay, did suffer for his transgressions because his latest "masterpiece" bombed at the box office.
Nevertheless, I like this film. I am not sure I could tell you why. Even when I saw it theatrically, and endured a print that was color-drained and truly unpleasant to watch (as was the subsequent DVD release), I came out feeling, not that I thought it was a fine movie, but that it was somehow a good one. There were enough sequences that suggested brilliance to offset any overall hatred of it, and I wound up feeling a strange dichotomy of incomprehension and admiration. I am not sure I have had that sensation before or since.
So, in answer to your question: Yes, the Criterion edition of this movie is well worth watching. I wish there had been a commentary from Cimino plus, as an extra, the film FINAL CUT, based upon the Steven Bach book, the combination of which would have provided us with a good argument on both sides of the coin.