Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate

In 1980, Michael Cimino, the director of the acclaimed The Deer Hunter, unveiled his vision of the American West. It was to have been a masterpiece, a Western of unparalleled artistry and depth. In the eyes of many American observers, however, it was an unqualified disaster. Some European critics, on the other hand, dubbed it a poetic masterpiece.

Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate is a film I love. I love it for what it could have been more so than what it actually is. I am a firm believer that bad films can be just as instructive in terms of good filmmaking as good films are and often times they are much more fascinating as well. Judged on its merits I think Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, unfortunately, drowns in its own greatness and profundity. Nonetheless, it is a noble effort which attempted to expand the boundaries of what can be done and discussed within the Western genre.

Let's face it, Heaven's Gate's "failure" in the U.S. is due, in no small part, to its length (3 1/2 hours), tone, and narrative peculiarities. The film throws traditional U.S. notions of narrative momentum, clarity, and character development out the window in favor of cryptic characterization, "deep" meaningful silences, and slow ponderous pacing akin to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, the film is a sepia-infused glory to behold. The compositions are impeccable and the setpieces, taken on their own, stand up to any David Lean epic. The use of sepia and dust-diffused light throughout the film are a clear indication that the film is one of nostalgia, literally a painful longing for things past and things faded. As Cimino put it, "what one loves about life are the things that fade."

Loss of Innocence, Class Warfare, and The Fading of the American Dream

Having begun production in 1979 it is a product of the 1970s cinema zeitgeist where, indicting a corrupt U.S. Government, "smashing the facade of the American Dream", and brooding on the futility of resistance was de rigueur for all "true" artists. Witness The Godfather Part II, Serpico, etc. Heaven's Gate overt stance against the romanticizing and mythologizing of the West in favor of a depiction of how it was truly won (money, guns, and ethnic killing) puts it in a genre all its own - the Anti-Western.

The film centers on a little known incident in April 1892, The Johnson County War, during which small farmers of Eastern European extraction faced off against cattle ranchers in Wyoming. The ranchers claiming, the immigrants were encroaching on their land and butchering their cattle, outsourced their violent proclivities and hired a band of mercenaries to wipe out the immigrants. Ultimately, however, the tide turned against the mercenaries and they had to be rescued by the U.S. Cavalry. A potentially inspiring story of the little guy beating the fat cats, right? Well, in the skilled hands of Michael Cimino even this inspiring story is cause existential despair.

In the narrative arc of the film, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) goes from idealistic Harvard youth in the film's prologue, to ambivalent protector of the immigrants in Wyoming, to dejected and distant richman, adrift on the shores of 1910 Rhode Island. He ends up a man of shattered ideals.

Vietnam, Russians, and the Force of History

Throughout the film Averill is more of a detached and ambivalent observer than he is an actor taking an active part in moving the plot forward. Averill doesn't so much act as react to situations. This is simply a problematic setup to have. Why? Well, it can make for a terribly boring film given our Western disdain for passive people and characters.

Apocalypse Now and Doctor Zhivago share similarly passive characters. Though Apocalypse Now is a great film it is ultimately dependent on individual set pieces (e.g. the Ride of the Valkyries air assault, the tiger jumping out of the jungle, etc.) and Martin Sheen's ponderous voiceover. Once those elements disappear in the last third of the film, it is up to Marlon Brando (Colonel Kurtz) to pickup the slack and save the film. Doctor Zhivago with its similarly ambivalent and wealthy protagonist, its class warfare and sweeping epic narrative also fails in this regard.

These films succeed in spite of their protagonists (I've yet to meet anyone quoting lines from Apocalypse Now's Willard (Martin Sheen) ). Because these characters are just observers the film must show us the goods in other areas. Heaven's Gate compounds the "boring protagonist problem" by setting him in a film which goes to great lengths (literally) to sloooow things down. Even the potentially tense plot device (a la High Noon) of mercenaries making their way into town via locomotive to slaughter the disorganized immigrants just fades into the lugubrious background. The supporting characters are all unidimensional and if, indeed, there is depth to them we are never provided a glimpse of it.

The immigrants of the film are a nearly undifferentiated mass of screams, grubby clothing, and petty infighting. Cimino, in his attempt to show that even the immigrants are infected with greed for land, wipes out any possibility that the audience can at least empathize with the characters available. In The Godfather Trilogy, Michael Corleone is a murderous thug but at least we understand why he's a murderous thug. The thin characterization of Averill, the immigrants, and villains alike make it difficult to emotionally anchor oneself to anyone in the film.

With regards to plot and pacing I think Cimino commits one of the cardinal sins that many auteurs seem to commit as they grow in critical stature: they express an utter contempt for such "rabble-rousing" things as tension, emotion and, dare I say it, drama. No, no, because these auteurs are making serious films they must jettison those "manipulative" things called plot and emotion. Case in point, Michael Mann's outings in Miami Vice and Ali (how exactly do you make an icon like Muhammad Ali boring?). I have to give James Cameron credit on this point. The man is a master of plotting and character development. Even with his tremendous reputation, say what you will of his films, he never forgets that character and plot are the keys to a good film.

When characters, such as the immigrants, do act in this film they still fail. The immigrants and Averill's victory against the ranchers and their mercenaries is snatched from them by who else but the U.S. Cavalry. So, in the moral universe of Heaven's Gate it seems that even when you act you ultimately fail. As one character puts it "It's not me doing it to you, Jim. It's the rules." And who make the rules? The powerful, and they can't be beat. The force of History cannot be stopped. Cimino captures this sentiment with a visual metaphor he laces throughout the film of dancers, graduate celebrations, and battle scenes in which the participants go round and round in concentric circles. The infernal cycle cannot be stopped, it seems. This kind of comfortable pessimism on Cimino's part allows one to walk away from the film with the feeling that the poor will always be poor and even rich angels like Averill can't save them. So, why try? Examples of the downtrodden defeating the powerful have no place in Cimino's epic narrative.

Final Thoughts

So, what is Cimino left with once he adamantly refuses to highlight the tension in his own screenplay or bring to light the potential complexity and agency of his characters? Pretty pictures and a daring Anti-Western that for once highlights the undercurrent of class conflict which has always been an implicit staple in this genre.

It is ironic that Cimino's sentiment that "what one loves about life are the things that fade" would eventually come to describe the fate of his most cherished film. Indeed, Heaven's Gate, unfortunately, has faded into obscurity with only a dusty memory of its title and reputation remaining. History and Hollywood ultimately judged Cimino's magnum opus a failure. But what a noble failure it was and how close he came to succeeding. If only there had been some soul in this beautifully photographed Das Kapital of Westerns...

History, perhaps, might have turned out differently.