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Heaven's
Gate
(1981) |
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Heaven's Gate will long be remembered within the film industry but sadly for its makers, for almost all the wrong reasons. The film started taking shape when its director Michael Cimino suddenly became Hollywood's hottest property having scored a massive critical success with The Deer Hunter (1978). Overnight a director who had been Michael Who? turned into the man with the Midas touch who could do no wrong and thus United Artists gave him the green light as well as a virtual carte blanche do go out and do his thing like never before, and so he did. Unfortunately Cimino's ego had swelled somewhat in the wake of his ascent to Hollywood superstardom as had his resolve to create something of true greatness with his Heaven's Gate project. The films already massive budget shot further skywards as Cimino's demands grew further and further exorbitant and reports that the director would have scenes shot and re shot up to forty times over before he would be somewhat satisfied that he had a useable shot in the can! 150 carpenters were brought in to construct the massive sets, and actors had to undergo rigorous horse riding training, dancing lessons, bullwhipping remedial classes and Ms. Huppert even had to shack up in a bordello for a few days so that she could fine tune her performance in accordance with the demands of the increasingly unstable Cimino. With a cast of thousands of extras (and horses), each single one of them given the period piece costume and make up treatment and with massive, sprawling outdoor sets and the sheer scale of production, the costs started to mount for United Artists who slowly began to realize that their entire future existence had been put at stake on the back of this film. As reports of the bloated cost and director's tantrums leaked to the press they typically had a field day and sharpened their knives awaiting the press screenings of Heaven's Gate - as eager to rip this one to shreds just as they had been in showering superlatives on Cimino's previous Deer Hunter. Traditionally the press enjoys nothing more than to build up a hero only to then hack him down to size and Michael Cimino was ripe for hacking having first been propped up the ladder to dizzying heights. When Heaven's Gate finally arrived, there were more than two or three people holding their breath in nervous anticipation. The movie wasn't going to be an easy sell clocking in at 3 hours and 39 minutes, but then Cimino had tested audience for over 3 hours with Deer Hunter and felt that he had the ability to keep people mesmerized on their seats for as long as liked. United Artists, the studio who had backed this enormous project had reached breaking point and if this film didn't succeed, they would sink. As it happened the critics lacerated the film to shreds, savaging it on all counts but for Vilmos Zsigmonds exemplary cinematography and of course the art design. The critics especially had a field day on Cimino and proceeded to slaughter him and his film to pieces in the most merciless manner. The film died within three days at the Box Office and even had the odious distinction of being labelled as "the biggest flop of all time", a feat which may have been topped by now, but once you are called the "biggest flop ever" you don't exactly have people other than curiosity mongers lining up to watch your product. Heaven's Gate utterly destroyed United Artists which had to fold in the wake of the films disastrous performance. Cimino was relegated from the A league of directors to the B league within "critical" circles and in terms of clout, he was finished. The career of Kris Kristofferson had hardly been threatening to take off in a major way and with this disaster that situation didn't change much. Isabelle Huppert didn't crossover to the American audience as she may have hoped but the real victim in all of this other than United Artists was Michael Cimino whose excesses are without doubt ultimately responsible for dragging the film down. The movie is set in the late 1800's following the Kristofferson character as he graduates from Harvard and heads on to Wyoming years later in order to try to sort out the "immigrant problem" that seems to be developing there between newly arriving immigrants and the older settlers. The first hour of the film is spent showing the elite of he new America at the graduating ceremony at Harvard, then the scene shifts to the vast, stark stretches of Wyoming where the immigrants are arriving from Europe (mostly jews) to escape persecution only to find that far worse awaits them here and instead of the American Dream they are faced with the worst kind of nightmare. There is a list of over 100 immigrants prepared by the wealthy cattle ranch owners who find their interests threatened by the arrival of the new desperate refugees and led by the callous Sam Waterston, they arm themselves and prepare to cleanse their environment of the "anarchists and thieves". With this in the background, the second quarter of the film introduces the delightful Isabelle Huppert who plays the Madame of a local brothel who is also targeted by the cattle ranch committee. Huppert is in love with the Harvard graduated Kristofferson, the man trying amidst the mounting horrors to restore some level of justice and humanity. There is a sort of love triangle which is developed by Cimino before the next chunk of the film slowly lurches towards the conflict scenario. The film is clearly a labour of obsessive love from the director and he has suffered for it in a sense that he has been unable to contain the film. He hasn't been able to rid the film of a host of scenes which smack of sheer over indulgence and excess of self adoring style. The dance at the Harvard graduation though spectacular to watch is simply visual candy floss with little depth. The dance and its spinning couples move around in circles in tandem with Cimino's spinning camera and yes you get a dizzying effect of the joys of celebration and youth, but really……..it goes on for ages and ages, wallowing in cinematic self indulgence. There are numerous such scenes where Cimino has simply wallowed in his own excesses, slowing events down to beyond a snails pace. The locations as stunningly captured by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, yet don't quite take the breath away as they did in The Days of Heaven. The final battle scene seems to go on for an eternity. Yet despite its shortcomings the film hardly deserved the scorn and ridicule it was greeted with upon release. Indeed, other than the self indulgence and excess of style as well as the dreadful performance of John Hurt there might even be a flawed classic contained within. European critics were far less hostile to the film and some have even stuck their necks out proclaiming the film to be a tainted masterpiece. The films resounding failure had enormous repercussions for Hollywood which are felt even 20 years after the event. It was Heaven's Gate that hastened the end of the line for directors having creative control over their films and when studio bosses and test audiences started to gradually take control and sequels and remakes becoming the order of the day. All risk taking was minimized in the wake of the Heaven's Gate calamity and never again, the big studio's decided, were they going to be taken to the cleaners at the behest of some hot shot young director who things he's gods gift to cinema. Heaven's Gate's disaster led to an era where Studio bosses refuse to take even the slightest risks, preferring to churn out franchise sequels of nonsensical mindless piffle rather than gamble on anything that might be slightly different or unconventional.
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