I guess when you get down to it, I don't really see the point behind Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. If we look beyond the fact that it essentially murdered the director-driven mode of production that had been prominent in Hollywood since the beginning of the Hollywood New Wave, it doesn't really hold up all of these years later. It exists in an artistic vacuum that sprang solely from Cimino's head. It reveals no real influences other than Cimino's eccentricities and hasn't really done anything to advance the cinema. It simply exists as an opaque block of celluloid that treats the viewer with contempt. Heaven's Gate tried to both have a plot (in this case concerning the real-life Johnson County War) while purposefully subverting narrative forms of storytelling. There are characters, intrigue, and drama, but they are often discarded in favor of lengthy non sequiturs that exist simply to add "atmosphere." It tries to mimic the contemplative pace of films like The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) while injecting scenes that seem straight out of The Wild Bunch (1969). The result is a film with little coherency which conscientiously tries to frustrate the audience. Here's an example: one plot point involves a posse hired to hunt down 125 settlers accused of "rustling" and other crimes. The local sheriff, Jim Averill, learns of the plot, goes to the town...and does nothing. Instead we are waylaid with about an hour of skating rink dances, tepid romantic triangles, and solemn shots of landscapes and clouds. Meanwhile, several days within the film's diegetic time frame passes. Then, when the posse actually starts to attack the town, ONLY THEN does Averill warn the townsfolk that there is a horde of hired killers coming for them. By that point we have lost sympathy with Averill because of the fact that any actual human being would have TOLD the townsfolk as soon as they arrived. Of course, you could easily argue that the point of Heaven's Gate has nothing to do with its plot. To which I respond: did anybody tell Cimino that while he was making the damn thing? Because I think he missed the memo.
6/10
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