Heaven's Gate Reviews

Even though this movie has obviously a terrible reputation, I still wanted to check it out for many years, especially since I always had a weak spot for Michael Cimino's work. Well, after finally watching the damned thing, even though it was definitely not the worst movie I have seen, it still didn't really work though. The main issue I had was how long and how slow the movie was. I mean, the shorter version seems awful but I have seen either the original cut or the director's cut lasting almost 4 hours and it was just pretty tedious. Even though 'The Deer Hunter' was 3 hours long, I never had any problem with this movie as every single minute was interesting, entertaining and helped the whole picture to become more and more spellbinding. However, with this directing follow-up, even though it was a decent story, did it really need such a long running time? I doubt it. And even though you might have expected many sub-plots to fill up the running time, there was surprisingly only one and it was a really boring love triangle involving Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert. Eventually, what bothered me the most was the fact that the characters were just so poorly developed, you learned pretty much nothing about them and they didn't evolve whatsoever which was just also really surprising since you spend so much time with them. And yet, I don't think it was a total disaster. Indeed, the whole thing looked amazing and it was probably one of the most beautiful Westerns I have seen but Cimino pretty much killed its potential because he was obsessed about delivering the greatest epic ever. Anyway, to conclude, even though the damned thing was indeed really flawed, I still think it is worth a look though, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in Michael Cimino's work.

Heaven's Gate is a beautiful film. Almost every frame perfectly captures the allure of the classical romantic West. Sadly, the rest of the film is essentially a disaster. If one looked up maniacal ego trip in the encyclopedia there would likely be a portrait of director Michael Cimino slapped on the page. The beauty of the film is hindered by a mess of a story, countless wasted minutes, horrible sound design and boring unrelatable characters.

It would take a while to document this film's crimes against cinema but some are so egregious they have to be mentioned. Important expository dialogue is drowned out by unrelenting "arty" background noise. Every scene seems to drag on longer than necessary and some sequences, like the near 30 minute prologue, are almost entirely unneeded. The immigrant characters you are supposed to root for are annoying and "fleshed out" via tediously long dance and cockfighting sequences. The core personal conflict of the story (the love triangle between Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken's characters) isn't introduced until the last third of the film and is poorly explained and unrealistic. By the end it's hard not to root for the heartless mercenaries to massacre every major character introduced in the film.

It's sad because Cimino obviously has considerable skill as an artist. He chooses amazing locations and builds wonderful sets. But the core important elements of the film are so flawed that instead of being noted for its beautiful imagery it stands as a testament to misguided self indulgence and excess.