636 Heaven's Gate

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feihong
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#201 Post by feihong » Sun Dec 23, 2012 1:22 am

Year of the Dragon' is a guilty pleasure for me: but it notably provided John Woo with some action set-pieces (as did 'The Deer-Hunter')
Woo really did get a lot from Cimino, didn't he? Didn't think of it until now (well, Bullet in the Head owes that obvious debt to The Deer Hunter {so does Sammo Hung's Eastern Condors, for that matter}, but looking at Year of the Dragon in relationship to the A Better Tomorrow films and The Killer is new for me). But it makes a lot of sense.

Year of the Dragon doesn't come off as so exceptionally terrible a movie to me; it's just lacking that enormous perspective for place and people that Cimino brought to The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate. I do recall more Chinese roles of importance in that movie than was common at the time, but I don't remember feeling as if Cimino handled those roles with any special sensitivity. He's certainly done more to provide perspective on and respect for polish and Russian immigrants than most other filmmakers, and he's been able to almost effortlessly delineate class and class struggle in his pictures. I'll have to brave Mickey Rourke once again and re-view Year of the Dragon.

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Yojimbo
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#202 Post by Yojimbo » Sun Dec 23, 2012 1:54 am

feihong wrote:
Year of the Dragon' is a guilty pleasure for me: but it notably provided John Woo with some action set-pieces (as did 'The Deer-Hunter')
Woo really did get a lot from Cimino, didn't he? Didn't think of it until now (well, Bullet in the Head owes that obvious debt to The Deer Hunter {so does Sammo Hung's Eastern Condors, for that matter}, but looking at Year of the Dragon in relationship to the A Better Tomorrow films and The Killer is new for me). But it makes a lot of sense.
......... I'll have to brave Mickey Rourke once again and re-view Year of the Dragon.
Year of the Dragon's dialogue is, for the most part, laughably bad; take a bow, Oliver Stone,- and Mickey's hair colouring seems to undergo a number of metamorphoses over the course of the movie, - maybe even the course of one scene.
To the best of my memory, a scene in 'Hard Boiled' is almost a note-for-note rip-off of a scene in 'Dragon'
Then there's the 'performance' of model-turned-actress, Ariane: admittedly a stunningly beautiful woman, and Raymond J. Barry's character seems uncomfortably similar to his character in the James Woods vehicle, 'Cop'
But those action sequences are stunningly executed, John Lone is a memorably urbane villain, and it was good to see 'White Powder Ma' getting his comeuppance.

Like I said, a 'guilty pleasure'

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#203 Post by Cold Bishop » Tue Dec 25, 2012 7:58 pm

Year of the Dragon is a fantastic film, if you can allow for its thematic/formalist/narrative schizo-like inconsistency. It's a very troubling movie that seems to be going in dozens of directions at once, but its undoubtedly the work of an expert craftsman. And unlike the later films, it doesn't feel like a job-for-hire: Cimino called the film a spiritual "sequel" to The Deer Hunter, and a lot of those obsessions carry over.

I don't mind a movie stumbling if it does so going the distance.
Last edited by Cold Bishop on Wed Dec 26, 2012 12:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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feihong
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#204 Post by feihong » Wed Dec 26, 2012 12:21 am

Gotta re-watch Year of the Dragon. I looked at some screen-shots a while ago and realized that I had only seen the movie on videocassette or on television in the past, and that I've never seen it in scope. Exciting! Looking forward to seeing it with fresh eyes.

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Yojimbo
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#205 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 26, 2012 12:33 am

Cold Bishop wrote:Year of the Dragon is a fantastic film, if you can allow for its thematic/formalist/narrative schizo-like inconsistency. It's a very troubling movie that seems to be going in dozens of directions at once, but its undoubtedly the work of an expert craftsman. And unlike the later films, it doesn't feel like a job-for-hire: Cimino called the film a spiritual "sequel" to The Deer Hunter, and a lot of those obsessions carry over.

I don't mind a movie stumbling if it does so going the distance.
I've always meant to find out who was the second-unit director on the film, and whether his career might have been worth investigating, as its the excitingly-staged action scenes, in Chinatown especially, which are the real stand-outs of the film.
(Of course its similarly the case with 'Heaven's Gate': the opening ballroom sequence, and the climactic battle)

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#206 Post by Cold Bishop » Wed Dec 26, 2012 1:21 am

Take your pick: either this guy or this guy.

The action scenes are undoubtedly the highpoint: despite being a big hit in Hong Kong and being a possible influence on the wave of crime films there, it's in many ways the opposite of the "Bullet Ballets". The scenes here aren't elaborately choreographed and drawn out; they (as someone else put it) happen unexpectedly, happen quickly, and when they're over, you're either dead or you're not.

But there are other things going on: Cimino isn't quite able to develop an all-encompassing visual design for the urban city the way he does for the more sparse, small-town milieus of his previous films - or say, the way a Walter Hill or William Friedkin do - so in a way the style seems a bit more unobtrusive, more invisible than his other films. But his voice is clearly there if you look for it: take away the action scenes, and I'm sure the Average Shot Length is well beyond the standard of its era, with more than a few long takes that very easily go unnoticed. Likewise, the film's impeccably framed and blocked, if lacking in the "hit-you-square-in-the-head" compositions that abounded in Heaven's Gate (although they exist: the shot of Stanley White towering over the female assassin could have been used as a one-sheet). He makes extensive use of architectural spaces, most clearly in the contrast between the blue-collar "ground level" White home (what do you call that? It's not a Brownstone) with the apartment porn of Tracy Tzu's top-floor penthouse*, even developing different visual, musical and tonal strategies for both milieus, which are often filmed like scenes from a completely different film, making the final invasion of inner-city violence into both environs all the more jarring. And then there's the fact that much of the film was shot on a North Carolina sound-stage, his Chinatown arguably more impressive a construction than any of the lavish sets in Heaven's Gate.

* Note: If Cimino can be believed, this accounts especially well for his visual eye. He claims that when he found the location it was essentially an abandoned warehouse. He had to twist De Laurentiis arm to convert the place to an apartment set. Flash forward 15 years, and it's been converted into the real-life Clocktower Apartment, and as of a few years ago was the most expensive apartment in Brooklyn.
Last edited by Cold Bishop on Wed Dec 26, 2012 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Yojimbo
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#207 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 26, 2012 1:44 am

Cold Bishop wrote:Take your pick: either this guy or this guy.
Neither exactly had a meteoric rise to fame; and I wonder what input Barsky had to 'Body Rock' and 'Alphabet City', two lousy films I saw in the mid 80s, solely because I got free tickets to the cinema where they were showing.
I think, therefore, I'm inclined to give Cimino most, if not all, of the credit

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feihong
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#208 Post by feihong » Wed Dec 26, 2012 4:03 am

Eh. widescreen photography did not redeem Year of the Dragon. It was just as bad as I remembered it being. Nothing feels real. The youth gangs seemed ridiculously insubstantial, making the youth gangs in Ferrara's China Girl seem fleshed-out. I actually liked Ariane in the movie--she had interesting movement, interesting facial expression, and she really only comes apart when she has to deliver horrifically flat lines--but she had barely anything to do but scream and whine. Actually, all the women who weren't assassins spent the picture screaming and whining. Rourke's "good cop who doesn't know when to stop" is ridiculously implausible; the script actually compelled him to literally never stop, rather than figuratively so, and by the final scene this ends up just killing everything that goes on. I was far more impressed with John Lone than I was as a teenager, but really, the movie ought to have been more about him than about Mickey Rourke. He was the character that generated actual sympathy, and maybe if we saw more of what he was actually doing, that sympathy would have been moderated. But the link between action and effect has never been Cimino's strongest point as a filmmaker, and this film is full of moments whose meaning you want to see explored in some damn way or other. Joey Tai's connection with the youth gangs is left up to the imagination, whereas it could have been a fruitful development in the movie to see the way Tai "handles" the youth gangs mirroring the way he "handles" the old men in charge of the triad. Rourke's whole crusade against the triad is hardly explained in any satisfactory way. The line between the Vietcong and the Triads in Rourke's mind is incredibly underdeveloped. The action was done with a certain flair, but it appeared at such prefabricated points in the story. And worst of all, the sensitivity one felt for people in The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate is just gone in Year of the Dragon. I wanted to like it more this time around, but it just seemed very unsatisfactory to me.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#209 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 26, 2012 10:56 am

feihong wrote:Eh. widescreen photography did not redeem Year of the Dragon. It was just as bad as I remembered it being. Nothing feels real. The youth gangs seemed ridiculously insubstantial, making the youth gangs in Ferrara's China Girl seem fleshed-out. I actually liked Ariane in the movie--she had interesting movement, interesting facial expression, and she really only comes apart when she has to deliver horrifically flat lines--but she had barely anything to do but scream and whine. Actually, all the women who weren't assassins spent the picture screaming and whining. Rourke's "good cop who doesn't know when to stop" is ridiculously implausible; the script actually compelled him to literally never stop, rather than figuratively so, and by the final scene this ends up just killing everything that goes on. I was far more impressed with John Lone than I was as a teenager, but really, the movie ought to have been more about him than about Mickey Rourke. He was the character that generated actual sympathy, and maybe if we saw more of what he was actually doing, that sympathy would have been moderated. But the link between action and effect has never been Cimino's strongest point as a filmmaker, and this film is full of moments whose meaning you want to see explored in some damn way or other. Joey Tai's connection with the youth gangs is left up to the imagination, whereas it could have been a fruitful development in the movie to see the way Tai "handles" the youth gangs mirroring the way he "handles" the old men in charge of the triad. Rourke's whole crusade against the triad is hardly explained in any satisfactory way. The line between the Vietcong and the Triads in Rourke's mind is incredibly underdeveloped. The action was done with a certain flair, but it appeared at such prefabricated points in the story. And worst of all, the sensitivity one felt for people in The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate is just gone in Year of the Dragon. I wanted to like it more this time around, but it just seemed very unsatisfactory to me.
So, you agree: great action scenes; laughably bad dialogue, .........and guilty pleasure

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#210 Post by tarpilot » Wed Dec 26, 2012 1:04 pm

feihong wrote:Nothing feels real. The youth gangs seemed ridiculously insubstantial, making the youth gangs in Ferrara's China Girl seem fleshed-out.
Is this supposed to be a knock against China Girl? It's a lyrical, fever-dream re-telling of Romeo & Juliet.

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feihong
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#211 Post by feihong » Wed Dec 26, 2012 7:29 pm

Yojimbo wrote:So, you agree: great action scenes; laughably bad dialogue, .........and guilty pleasure
Haha. I guess I do agree, sort of. I missed out on the pleasure, I guess, but the rest sounds fine to me.

As far as China Girl goes, that wasn't a knock against it. The youth gangs in that movie feel more like they emerge from the Elizabethan source material than the setting of the film, and I think as a result they are developed only cursorily--I liked China Girl very much, and the fact that it was an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is very clear from the outset, but the development of the gangs in that movie only goes so far as the development of the gangs goes in Romeo and Juliet. Still, the youth gangs in China Girl have far more character, life and motivation than those in Year of the Dragon.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#212 Post by djproject » Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:51 am

feihong wrote:That's just silly. You've only seen the Deer Hunter, and you have the guy's number as a filmmaker? And for the record, I think you missed a great deal of what was going on in The Deer Hunter. It isn't just characters and plot. There's also the subtle, musical structure of the picture, the use of music to express the common feelings within a community, the complicated thematic material, the gentle sense of complicated feelings between people (between Streep and De Niro, for instance, or De Niro and Walken, or Streep and Walken, or De Niro and Savage). The pace of The Deer Hunter may seem deliberate to you, but it's remarkable to me how in so little a span of dramatic space Cimino is able to build a large community of people and create a sense of their hopes, their burdens, the places they have come from and the places they are inhabiting.

The same things come clear in Heaven's Gate. It's fairly clear from these films that Cimino does have great sensitivity with film (that is the quality I feel leaves his work for the most part after Heaven's Gate, and makes him seem a more common filmmaker--was it something that was forced on him, or did he lose whatever talent he had? I don't know). Back then, at least, he could place people in a place and have you understand so much about both place and people--he could invite you to imagine how things had come to be the way they were, which is not a skill that many filmmakers have in spades. Cimino's ego may be a sight to behold, and it may seem galling to some people, but there are ways in which it is justified, because he had so much more talent than so many filmmakers, and he covered such unique ground. I like to laugh at his ego, and I think it's hard to defend Year of the Dragon, The Sicilian or The Sunchaser as worthy of the guy who directed The Deer Hunter, but he did more in a few pictures than many directors have done in a whole, extensive oeuvre.
Fine, I may have jumped the gun in some respects.

However, I feel my point still stands that Ciminio's heavy-handiness does get in the way - and can in fact impede - on the natural life of a scene or a character or a story. I found that the best moments in The Deer Hunter were when the scene was just playing itself without the need to fulfill story obligations, set up plot points or themes or make a point. When something has to fulfill the story, it comes off as "I'm addressing the theme now" or "This is the plot point" and this jars strongly with the more natural moments. The best comparison I can make is if you were to combine Debussy and Haydn into one piece where it goes back and forth between the two. That's my main problem with The Deer Hunter and I'm sure I'll feel the same way with Heaven's Gate and the other films he has done.

And I do believe it is possible to blend naturalism/realism and formalism. In fact, I recently viewed Shame and that I felt had the right balance of something that was deliberately constructed but is allowed itself to just be. It's what I would call a "realist melodrama." But it is a balancing act that some directors can pull off and others don't. I feel with Ciminio, it's like combining oil and water.

And clarify something ... I never said I was against deliberate pacing. I do appreciate it for what it is and I've seen examples of this working well. Nor did I think the pacing was a problem with The Deer Hunter. My big issue with the film was the combining of what I felt was more natural and what was contrived. The best example of this was the final hunting trip amongst the guys. Pretty much the whole sequence was played out very well and very naturally (even with Michael saying "This is something else. This is this"). When they return the bar, they continue that energy of camaraderie that felt very genuine and real. Then it switches into "this is an obvious mood change" when the Chopin nocturne is played on the piano. To me, it felt like a contrived mood whiplash where you're suddenly told "yeah, this is a sad moment because three guys are about to be shipped off to Vietnam now." I felt there could have been a more subtle/natural way to do it.

But again, this is just my take on it. I put the caveat there for anyone to take it for whatever it's worth.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#213 Post by The Doogster » Wed Jan 09, 2013 2:00 am

Warning - contains spoilers!

I just watched Heaven's Gate for the first time (Criterion Blu-Ray version). For many years I had been put off by the whiff-of-death legend surrounding this movie.

My initial reaction was that it is a pastiche of several other similar movies of that era. For example, McCabe & Mrs Miller (the prostitute angle), Days of Heaven (two men after one woman angle), the Wild Bunch (the ultra-violence angle), and Bonnie & Clyde (the ending). If not a pastiche of those movies, then Cimino was certainly influenced by those movies (and deservedly, for they are great movies).

Man-o-man, if there was ever a director who was in need of a script editor with a big red pen, and a producer with a firm hand, it would be Cimino. There were so many "stagey" scenes which added nothing whatsoever to the story. These scenes looked like they were the most expensive (eg. lots of extras, lots of choreography, built from scratch locations, etc), so I suspect Cimino didn't want to "kill his children". And what on earth was the John Hurt character in the movie for? I suspect he was the token "Hey, not all rich guys are bad" character. Even with the 3.5 hour length, the audience never really gets to know the characters in any depth. They are always kept at arm's length (a la John Wayne). Maybe that was the effect Cimino was striving for? And the ending is a major letdown. Gee, the cavalry arrives right in the middle of the big finale. A fine example of deus ex machina.

Depsite all these flaws, I still think this is a reasonably good movie. It's certainly better than The Deer Hunter, which is officially The Most Overrated Movie Of All Time. I can understand what Cimino was trying to do - make the ultimate western, involving bad guys who are evil incarnate, a stinging critique of the American Way, a timeless love story, magestic sweeping images, and an epic gunfight (I'm surprised he didn't have any Native Americans in the story, for the sake of having covered all bases). It's just a pity he let his massive ego get in the way of what could have been a truly great movie.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#214 Post by JonasEB » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:00 am

The Doogster wrote:My initial reaction was that it is a pastiche of several other similar movies of that era. For example, McCabe & Mrs Miller (the prostitute angle), Days of Heaven (two men after one woman angle), the Wild Bunch (the ultra-violence angle), and Bonnie & Clyde (the ending). If not a pastiche of those movies, then Cimino was certainly influenced by those movies (and deservedly, for they are great movies).
Those are common attributes to westerns in general, going all the way back to the silent era, and Heaven's Gate is very conscious about that. It's a conventional homesteaders vs. ranchers plot but it contains key details that past films on the subject avoided. The people in Stagecoach end up in an old west red light district. The two men/one woman angle is present in a lot of older films, such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford is very pertinent to this film.) Violence, well that was just carte blanche in the film industry at the time, it was everywhere.
The Doogster wrote:Man-o-man, if there was ever a director who was in need of a script editor with a big red pen, and a producer with a firm hand, it would be Cimino. There were so many "stagey" scenes which added nothing whatsoever to the story. These scenes looked like they were the most expensive (eg. lots of extras, lots of choreography, built from scratch locations, etc), so I suspect Cimino didn't want to "kill his children". And what on earth was the John Hurt character in the movie for? I suspect he was the token "Hey, not all rich guys are bad" character. Even with the 3.5 hour length, the audience never really gets to know the characters in any depth. They are always kept at arm's length (a la John Wayne). Maybe that was the effect Cimino was striving for? And the ending is a major letdown. Gee, the cavalry arrives right in the middle of the big finale. A fine example of deus ex machina.
Choreography - Are you talking about the opening graduation ball and the Heaven's Gate dance in the middle of the film? If so, those aren't remotely stagey and they have a lot to do with the story (aside from the wonderful atmosphere and sheer emotional presence they build in the film.) Those two parts and the war at the end all match each other and they all communicate together. John Hurt - He occupies the traditional "fool" character type within the film. Kristofferson's character is from the same background, so Hurt's not there for the "not all bad" reason. He's one of the people caught in the middle; he has a conscience but is too weak or perhaps unwilling to do anything about it (remember his jovial address at the beginning?) Most people are like that. I'd agree and disagree with your comment on getting to know the characters - they are archetypal in many ways but I feel they are genuine people at the same time, and John Wayne? I'd say you should watch, or rewatch, John Ford's work because it has more to do with this film than anything else (and definitely see My Darling Clementine, maybe the axis of the entire western genre, and which I think of as the father of Heaven's Gate, the omega western.) The cavalry arriving is a traditional western thing - see Stagecoach - and its use is particularly stinging in this case (it is a machination, but not God's.)
The Doogster wrote:Depsite all these flaws, I still think this is a reasonably good movie. It's certainly better than The Deer Hunter, which is officially The Most Overrated Movie Of All Time. I can understand what Cimino was trying to do - make the ultimate western, involving bad guys who are evil incarnate, a stinging critique of the American Way, a timeless love story, magestic sweeping images, and an epic gunfight (I'm surprised he didn't have any Native Americans in the story, for the sake of having covered all bases). It's just a pity he let his massive ego get in the way of what could have been a truly great movie.
That feels slightly reductive (and The Deer Hunter bit definitely is) but Heaven's Gate definitely is a film that wants to do everything and be everything (oh, Native Americans don't figure in the story because by this time, 1892, they were rendered irrelevant - their absence is something of a part of the film in itself.) Cimino, massive ego? Sure, but Heaven's Gate is a truly great movie.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#215 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:30 pm

The Doogster wrote:And what on earth was the John Hurt character in the movie for? I suspect he was the token "Hey, not all rich guys are bad" character.
I actually think that Hurt is one of most damned characters in the movie. Yeah, he may seem the voice of conscience for the elites, but as such, he's completely impotent and even hypocritical. You can't damn an army and then ride beside them into a massacre. Hurt, as opposed to being a positive character, is utterly tragic: he may voice dissent, but his inaction makes him acquiescent, if not complicit, in the atrocity that follows. He may call himself a "a victim of our class", but there's nothing stopping him from joining Averill than inertia, cynicism and the comforts of that very class. It's a characterization of a certain type that strikes me as incredibly true to life, often on a massive scale (such as a country that may be overwhelmingly against a war, but still allow it to go on for years. :D )
(I'm surprised he didn't have any Native Americans in the story, for the sake of having covered all bases).
I think the finale, and conflict that precedes it, is definitely suppose to call to mind the earlier genocides, just as it equally calls to mind the later labor wars. You can even read Vietnam in there, but I'm not opening that can of worms.

"There's too many of them, Wolcott. It's not like the Indians. You can't just kill them all."
The Doogster wrote:And the ending is a major letdown. Gee, the cavalry arrives right in the middle of the big finale. A fine example of deus ex machina.
The ending isn't a deus ax machina, it's a knife in the chest. The cavalry may ride in, but they ride in to save those responsible for the massacre. The fact that a scene later, Averill gets a chance to get "revenge" (albeit, at a high cost) strikes me as much more of a dishonest contrivance. But I can overlook that for the haunting epilogue on the yacht.

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tenia
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#216 Post by tenia » Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:01 pm

Quickly : I watched the movie on Sunday as part of the Glasgow Film Festival, and haven't seen the strange chemical blue stains at 1h27 min. I'm wondering if I missed it but don't think so.
However, it was clearly stated before the movie that the new print was based on what has been done by Criterion.

The copy was digital.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#217 Post by life_boy » Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:18 pm

I am far enough removed from 1980 and I have read enough appreciations of the film’s merits that I had a great expectation to find in Heaven’s Gate an unfairly tarnished masterpiece. Unfortunately, I did not see it. This turned out to be rather grueling from the start all the way through. In a film that wants to deal with the injustice served to a whole class of people due to the wealth, power and government immunity of the rich, Cimino does not seem very concerned at all to give the audience any deep characters. His main objective is the precise atmosphere that houses his allegory, an atmosphere that in some scenes does more to dehumanize the people he is representing than to lend comment or clarity to what anyone does or says. He certainly presents the towns of Sweetwater and Casper as very muddy, crowded and noisy places set in the midst of the most pristine landscapes imaginable. It is a shocking contrast, a comment on human order bringing chaos to nature rather than the other way around. In fact, the shock of the busyness of Casper, Wyoming was one of the few thrills the film offered me. It is so busy that it becomes a bit distracting toward the end of the scene.

Though Cimino might wish it were Days of Heaven, he lacks the spiritual interests of Malick to present here anything other than a very bleak and chaotic view of humanity trapped in the inevitability of the gears of time. He also lacks the humanist portraiture of Altman to create a complement* to McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The characters here are small people with small ideas, always overwhelmed by everything around them, yet filmed in such a way that makes their futility seem noble. Sun streaming through windows, beautiful vistas behind them, low angles looking up at them. Sam Waterson’s character is evil to his core, but even that feels bland in the end. Kristofferson seems completely over his head. The only real excitement was when Walken enters the frame, but even his character is so convoluted and confused I found myself connecting with him purely on the name and talent of the actor and not in the character he was portraying.

Someday I may revisit this and find my opinion has completely shifted but, for now, I must say I was very disappointed this did not resonate very deeply with me.

* "counterpoint" changed to "compliment" by the author to reflect a proper use of the English language
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Mr Sausage
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#218 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:32 pm

life_boy wrote:Though Cimino might wish it were Days of Heaven, he lacks the spiritual interests of Malick to present here anything other than a very bleak and chaotic view of humanity trapped in the inevitability of the gears of time.
That isn't a criticism.
life_boy wrote:He also lacks the humanist portraiture of Altman to create a counterpoint to McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
I don't think counterpoint means what you think it does.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#219 Post by life_boy » Tue Feb 19, 2013 6:19 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
life_boy wrote:Though Cimino might wish it were Days of Heaven, he lacks the spiritual interests of Malick to present here anything other than a very bleak and chaotic view of humanity trapped in the inevitability of the gears of time.
That isn't a criticism.
I meant that the formal elements of Heaven's Gate seemed to counter what was being expressed philosophically and politically. Though I understand that it was perhaps presenting a contrast, it felt more to me like the visuals were simply for the sake of having something pretty to look at and not essential to an understanding of the film. I guess it is unfair to evoke Days of Heaven and to argue against Heaven's Gate for being a different film, but Heaven's Gate failed to resonate with me where a similar type of film from the same era did, so I mentioned it as a point of comparison.
Mr Sausage wrote:
life_boy wrote:He also lacks the humanist portraiture of Altman to create a counterpoint to McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
I don't think counterpoint means what you think it does.
It means a complementing or contrasting element. I meant it in the complementary sense, of course. I thought I had misused it at first too but I looked it up before I posted it. :)

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#220 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:38 pm

life_boy wrote:I meant that the formal elements of Heaven's Gate seemed to counter what was being expressed philosophically and politically. Though I understand that it was perhaps presenting a contrast, it felt more to me like the visuals were simply for the sake of having something pretty to look at and not essential to an understanding of the film. I guess it is unfair to evoke Days of Heaven and to argue against Heaven's Gate for being a different film, but Heaven's Gate failed to resonate with me where a similar type of film from the same era did, so I mentioned it as a point of comparison.
Aside from the fact that they each have good cinematography and heaven in the title, I don't see the comparison. I'm not even sure the two movies look alike. As beautiful as the photography in Heaven's Gate can look, it's not pristine (there is a lot of smoke, fog, dust, clutter, ect.). And the movie is a slow devolution, beginning with the elegant pageantry of the prologue and finishing with the chaotic, apocalyptic swirl of the battle scene. Cold Bishop would be able to make this point in more detail (and you should read his posts in this thread and the Cimino thread), but the formal design of the film fits its themes fairly well.
life_boy wrote:It means a complementing or contrasting element. I meant it in the complementary sense, of course. I thought I had misused it at first too but I looked it up before I posted it.
Counterpoint means the antithesis of something. It's only complementary in the way that ying and yang are complementary, or Hegel's dialectic is complementary: opposing parts fitting together to form a whole.

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life_boy
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#221 Post by life_boy » Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:19 pm

That's true. I like the idea you pose of devolution, and that certainly justifies some things I noticed as the film progresses-----the chaotic feeling of the crowd scenes (cut on med CUs between various people in the group without regard for geography), the huge amount of dust kicked up in that final ride and battle (which is one of the more lingering images for me from the film), the motif of circling----yet I was still left disengaged from the film where I wanted to be engaged. I also found myself disoriented through many of these scenes because of those directorial choices (have I met that character before? what group is riding in? didn't that person get shot in the other battle?).

Even if it is establishing an idea of pageantry or that the west is always bound to the elite of the east, I still don't love sitting through the first 20 minutes of Heaven's Gate (among other parts). Also, in thinking upon it further, it seems to me that part of my unwillingness to completely embrace the allegory is that the allegory is hampered by some plot issues.
SpoilerShow
--Why doesn't Champion shoot Canton when he had the chance? Didn't he see the futility of his situation once he openly played his hand?
--Why did all the killers have to travel together as a huge band? Couldn't they have split up into multiple groups to divide and conquer? Why force a unified front of opposition if you don't have to?
--And why did it seem to take them so long to get to Sweetwater?
Mr Sausage wrote:Counterpoint means the antithesis of something.
Yes, you're right. Corrected above.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#222 Post by Zot! » Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:41 pm

life_boy wrote:Even if it is establishing an idea of pageantry or that the west is always bound to the elite of the east, I still don't love sitting through the first 20 minutes of Heaven's Gate (among other parts). Also, in thinking upon it further, it seems to me that part of my unwillingness to completely embrace the allegory is that the allegory is hampered by some plot issues.
SpoilerShow
--Why doesn't Champion shoot Canton when he had the chance? Didn't he see the futility of his situation once he openly played his hand?
--Why did all the killers have to travel together as a huge band? Couldn't they have split up into multiple groups to divide and conquer? Why force a unified front of opposition if you don't have to?
--And why did it seem to take them so long to get to Sweetwater?
The Heaven's Gate opening echoes Cimino's similar bravura wedding scene that starts The Deer Hunter. I assume it is an effort to get the viewer immersed visually into the world of the film before the story kicks off. It's unorthodox, but I think it works wonderfully in both films. I totally get where you are coming from concerning some of the plot "allowances", but that's just what they are. Despite a lot of realistic elements and historical accuracy on a minute scale, Cimino refuses to acknowledge the need for the larger cohesive elements. There are a lot of poetic moments that don't quite make logical sense (like when the roller rink clears out for a romantic interlude), and the final battle's spacial relations and sense of time require considerable suspension of disbelief. Again, I can accept it won't work for some viewers, but it is certainly what makes this a one of a kind personal epic and for me an artistic success.

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life_boy
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#223 Post by life_boy » Wed Feb 20, 2013 12:19 am

Zot! wrote:Again, I can accept it won't work for some viewers, but it is certainly what makes this a one of a kind personal epic and for me an artistic success.
You're quite right. I don't know of another film that I have felt was this unsuccessful and yet found myself still compelled to consider throughout the day. A very unique movie indeed.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#224 Post by jbeall » Sat Mar 16, 2013 1:02 am

Cold Bishop wrote:
The Doogster wrote:And the ending is a major letdown. Gee, the cavalry arrives right in the middle of the big finale. A fine example of deus ex machina.
The ending isn't a deus ax machina, it's a knife in the chest. The cavalry may ride in, but they ride in to save those responsible for the massacre. The fact that a scene later, Averill gets a chance to get "revenge" (albeit, at a high cost) strikes me as much more of a dishonest contrivance. But I can overlook that for the haunting epilogue on the yacht.
The cavalry riding in is more or less what actually happened. I know that Heaven's Gate isn't the first western to portray callous, possibly psychotic ranchers pitted against impoverished homesteaders, but this Cimino's film shows better than most just how easy it was for the bad guys literally to get away with murder because they had all the right connections (and were fluent in English).
However, I agree with Cold Bishop that Averill's "revenge" is less effective. I didn't see why that scene was necessary in the first place. Take it away, and what does the film lose? Although Ella's dressed in white like she's a bride, Averill's got his wife back east, and I thought the whole point was that he was too chickenshit to tell her. Does it give the redeemed madam a moment of grace before her death? That would seem to undermine the realism of the cavalry's rescue just a few minutes earlier.

That said, I thought it was a tremendous film, and one or two weak scenes in a 3.5-hour epic didn't ruin it for me.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#225 Post by lock67ca » Mon Jul 15, 2013 2:45 pm

Here's my opinion, and I've said this to a few other people when I've defended the film. The studio-enforced cut, much like Once Upon a Time in America, is an abomination. The new Criterion edition is the only way to see this film. It's easy to see where Cimino's ego got the best of him, but I've personally always seen Heaven's Gate as his (deeply flawed) masterpiece, in much the same way that Leone's film was, before the studio hacked it to death.

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