Cimino has the incredibly bad judgement

I've seen The Deer Hunter probably a dozen times, and each time I see it, I think less of it. Most of that movie is a waste. Why make a movie about Vietnam and then have the Vietnam section be about something that didn't even happen over there? It's like making a movie about Custer's last stand but, instead of the Indians and Cavalry fighting, the Cavalry plays an epic volleyball match with them. He's made a core symbol of a film about an experience something that was not even part of the actual experience. And the characters don't change in any logical way. The Deer Hunter is highly rated and it has a few good shots in it, but overall it's a mess.

But now that I've seen Heaven's Gate, I realize Cimino could do a hell of a lot worse. This movie is full of incredibly bad choices and instances of outright idiocy.

First, you build elaborate sets and fret endlessly about the placement of them. Then you hire Vilmos Zsigmond, who's one of the best (if not the best) cinematographers who ever lived to photograph it. And then... you cover it all with clouds of dust and smoke so it's all obscured, and you screw with the color to leech out almost everything except brown. It's ridiculous. Getting Zsigmond to photograph clouds of smoke is absurd.

The sound mix is no better. The dialogue is awful to begin with, and half of it is in foreign languages which - in the TCM print I watched - were not even subtitled. But, none of that matters because you can't hear most of it anyway. it's all drowned out by background and ambient noise.

And Cimino obviously would much rather be a choreographer than a director. If this thing had one more song and dance number it'd count as a musical. None of these scenes add a damn thing in any way and do nothing to move the story along. They're ridiculous. I thought the movie was already out of control and then when a rollerskating fiddle-player showed up I almost laughed myself into an aneurysm. The immigrants are supposed to be working and struggling, but you only see that in one or two brief (and hysterically overwrought) scenes. The rest of the time, it's like a big silly carnival. Even during one of the film's few dramatic scenes, Cimino makes sure that through a window you can see a guy juggling. That's a little distracting.

I know Cimino likes to be an "immersive" director, where, instead of really characterizing anyone, he just lets you spend a lot of time hanging out and watching them so you get to know them. That'd be fine if he made wise choices, but he doesn't. He has no idea when to begin and end a story. We start about 20 years before the story with Kristofferson's and Hurt's graduation. There is no reason for this whatsoever, other than it's a way for Cimino to fit in more dancing numbers. It does nothing to characterize them, and then Hurt is shoved into the background, afterward, and none of it has anything to do with Kristofferson later.

Then he doesn't know how to end it. He's got what would be a powerful ending shot, with Kristofferson walking away, but... that's not the ending, because we have needless stuff afterward, with the ambush and all. Then, the epilogue with Hurt aboard the boat does nothing, either. I guess it lets us know he lived, but that's about it. It's ridiculous.

The big payoff battle scene is so badly done it's a shame. You can hardly tell who is where and who they're shooting at. When it came time to actually choreograph something useful, Cimino wasn't interested. Maybe the battle should had been done on rollerskates so he'd do something with it.

There's not much of a story (and what little there is, Cimino doesn't appear to be very interested in), but when there is, it's just stupid. Walken spending a gunfight in a burning cabin to write a note that the cabin's on fire is so brain-dead I'm surprised nobody pulled Cimino aside and said, "You do realize this is stupid on about a dozen different levels, right?" It'd be pretty obvious to anyone that the cabin got burned, even if Walken got out. If Walken didn't get out, his note would burn, too. Etc. There's a false start where the war seems like it's finally going to start... aaaaaand then nothing happens and we go back to the romantic triangle for half an hour or more.

I tried giving this movie a chance and was actually interested in watching it, because, as bad as the Deer Hunter actually is, it does have a certain fascination to it (once you get through that pointless hour-long wedding scene). But this thing... it's awful. I almost feel like Cimino made it to show his contempt for the studio and movie-making in general. It's like he knew that Deer Hunter got overpraised, decided everyone was an idiot, and said, "Here, I'll make something REALLY awful and watch you guys heap praise upon it! I dare ya!"