Heaven’s Gate (1980)

(On Cable TV, July 2019) Some films live in infamy no matter their content, and so Heaven’s Gate is usually remembered nowadays as one of the most infamous bombs of all time, a critical and commercial flop so famous that it not only destroyed the career of then-renowned writer-director Michael Cimino, but killed the studio United Artists and is credited with ending the New Hollywood movement, thus altering the history of movies themselves. Whew. Of course, that’s not true: New Hollywood was already on the way out by the time Star Wars opened in theatres three years earlier, United Artists was being mismanaged by its corporate overlords, and Cimino’s reputation as a difficult auteur was going to catch up with him sooner or later. The point being that Heaven’s Gate commercial flop and troubled production history certainly contaminated its critical reception: Like near-contemporary Ishtar, critics piled on the film far beyond its putative lack of qualities. The result, for contemporary moviegoers approaching Heaven’s Gate by way of its reputation, may be a pleasant surprise at the film’s undeniable qualities. Now, let’s be careful: I am not accusing Heaven’s Gate of being a good movie. It’s incredibly indulgent, often boring, exasperating at times and certainly not as good as it could have been given its premise, cast or means. If you’re allergic to the New Hollywood style, with its digressions, long-winded pacing, gratuitous and repetitive scenery shots, then this will not help you. On the other hand… this is clearly a big-budget production (one of the main causes of its reputation) and a lot of it is on the screen, what with a convincing recreation of the American West, elaborately constructed set-pieces and convincing sequences. The cast remains fascinating forty years later (if you’ve ever wanted to see Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken go at each other in a fist-fight, then this is the movie for you) and Cimino’s eye as a director, while flawed in terms of pacing and concision, remains a cut above most other directors of the time. Even the flawed quirks of the film (including an interminable sequence with a roller-skating fiddler) are sort of impressive in their own way. I don’t really like Heaven’s Gate and will not try to rehabilitate it, but it’s better than expected and better than what its reputation would suggest.