Is it really that bad?

The lack of characterization in the film, particularly the immigrants doesn't allow a viewer to engage with their plight on an emotional level. He gives more attention to the details of the land barons in ways that inadvertantly make them attractive. Seeing them in the grandeur of their dress, in their clubs, places of power while the immigrants are just a blob of struggling humanity, excruciatingly poor and ignorant.

But once again, I think you're completely wrong. You keep calling them a faceless mob, but the only thing I'd agree with you is the "mob" part. They clearly have a face. Once again, the film's narrative is "non-individual-oriented", and this is especially true in terms of the immigrants, who are always characterized communally. The roller skate alone "fleshes" them out more than two dozen subplots would in other filmmakers films. You seem to be asking for subplots, while I feel that would be lazy when compared with Cimino's sophisticated approach to the narrative.

You say there just struggling and toilling... and it's true, but not just in the film, but in reality itself. The discrepancy you point out between the barons and the immigrants makes entire logical and dramatic sense. But you're also missing out of the pure joy and love that Cimino takes in the immigrant community as a community, even when he's disapproving of some of the behaviour. The crowd scenes, before the war comes to the county, breath with a vibrant sense of community and camraderie, once again, best typified by the roller-skate-dance scene, which has to be among the greatest scenes in the American cinema. They're not a faceless mob, they're in fact very human and very sympathetically drawn. He doesn't rely on our innate sense of morals. He shouldn't. If they were so innate, the topic he's making the film on wouldn't need dramatizing.

As for him "glorifying" the riches and grandeur of the barons, I fail to see it. If anything, the movie doesn't spend enough time with them, allowing the conflict to be too black-and-white in the immigrant's favor. Which makes your thesis all the more puzzling. I fail to see the one scene where Avery visits the clubhouse as sufficient enough to to skew our sympathies in our favor. Especially as callous as the barons are played, with John Hurt as a drunken voice of conscious, and with the camera drawing our favor clearly towards Avery.

The only other two scenes that cross the track into the world of wealth and privilege are equally balanced. The prologue is certainly a splendid and marvelous piece of filmmaking, taking as much joy in their community as it later does with the immigrants, but also ultimately reveals that there is a not-so-repressed violence seething even under "civilized" Eastern society. The epilogue goes even farther, presenting all the riches and splendour of the upper classes as nothing more than a crippling, repressive straight-jacket on Avery's soul and conscious.

The mere fact that so many people cannot even watch this film should tell you something.

It only tells me something I knew before I saw this film. That irrational mob mentality rules in film criticism, as it does in most other aspects of life, more than any rational critical judgement. Thankfully, critical opinions can be reversed over time. Rules of the Game, Lola Montes and Peeping Tom all attest to that. All three hated violently upon release, all three now recognized among the greatest ever made I'm sure Heaven's Gate will join them eventually as far as misunderstood masterpieces go. The problems is combating the irrationally violent opinion against the film at least far enough that people can watch the film unbiasedly and open a critical discussion on it. In your defense, you're at least trying to grapple with the text, although I feel you're definitely wrong in most of your points.

For if as you say,

"Heaven's Gate is one of fiercest takedowns of manifest destiny, and the inherent violence of the patriarchal-capitalist establishment made in cinema,"

...then its failure for the larger movie-going audience is monumental.

On the contrary, I think Heaven's Gate power and aim in its goal is almost enough to have ensured its failure. America's don't love downers. They especially don't love them when they condemn the society that they benefit from. And this goes doubly in an age of "social" and "moral" recuperation such as Reagan's America. It is telling that the film was received enthusiastically in Europe (something even Steven Bach admitted). America can only stand it's dirty laundry to be aired out to an extent, and even the American Left are largely nothing more than moderate liberal capitalists. Anyways, a violent negative response is often, if not more often, as much a testament to a work of art's power than widespread acceptance (as the three films mention above can partly testify too).

By the way, what was Jeff Bridges prototype since you understand this so well?

I think there are several ways you can understand Bridges character: his role in the Western framework; in a social community; in a capitalist economic system. I think perhaps the most important aspect is that, on a smaller scale, he's as much an entrepreneur as some of the land barons, right down to not being above exploiting them (in his case, with booze and gambling). But he's ultimately part of the community, and small-business is nothing in the face of big-business.

do agree with you that all rape scenes are problematic. But the one in HG was just downright offensive to me. And more than the one in Once Upon a Time in America which evolved out of the characterizations. As I said, I don't like the characters but that's who they were as developed by the writers.

I think the rape scene in ...America is infinitely more problematic for two very large reasons: 1) Beyond being true to the character, the film is true to Leone, who has a real large misogynistic streak running through the rest of the film, and in fact his whole career (Once Upon a Time in the West being a sole, but not complete, exception.) 2) The camera looks down on Elizabeth McGovern with the same prurient, possessive gaze that Noodles is. It's one thing to be true to a character, it's another to be true to his actions. The camera violates her as much as the character does, and for all the problems with Heaven's Gate scene, it never takes such a strong stance as that. The aestheticizing of the rape in Gate is incoherent. In ...America, it is firmly resolved, but troubling in its implications.

In HG it is a random act of violence from strangers. She comes on the scene unwittingly. Worse, because the character is a prostitute, there may be the assumption that this is less of a crime than of the virginal character in Once Upon... The idea that prostitutes engage in sex all the time with strangers for money, what difference did this make? Believe me: a big difference.

It can come from strangers just as easily as people you know, but that's beyond the point. The point is that the American West (and hell, all of America) was forged through blood and violence - and that includes rape. I feel nothing untrue about the characterization of that scene beyond the questionable staging of the rape itself (which in itself I can't condemn offhand). The film doesn't at all suggests that Watson has it coming because she's a "whore". It suggests that that's what other people may feel - there's a reason the mercenaries feel free to violate them - but this is an idea that's alive to modern days, but which Cimino gives no impression of subscribing to. The act is clearly displayed as despicable, and any incoherence in the staging of the rape is undercut by the quick shot of the upstairs attic, where the beaten, mutilated, probably dead women lay (as well as the muttering cries of Nick Ray when he discovers them) - a shot that has not an ounce of eroticism or prurience in its terribleness.

You know, writing this, it becomes clear that Heaven's Gate and Once Upon a Time in America have quite a bit in common. Both are long epics which were butchered upon release. Both were originally meant to be longer (and both could maybe use the added length). Both in their own ways signal the end of a type of film that could be made in the 70s, but quickly died during Reagan. And both are epics about America and work in the confines of two of America's most popular enduring genres: the Western and the Gangster film. And both take at its heart the same topic: the inherent violence and corruption of capitalism, and the real manner in which it built modern America. However, the relationship towards in women in the Leone are infinitely more troublesome. The only thing I can think of is the fact that his film puts the relationship front and center, while the Cimino dissolves it into the group, makes it easier for you to swallow.

I also feel a feminist critique ignores the fact that in many ways the film is forward looking in its roles of women. It doesn't deny the women of the town their right to "masculinity". In the final battle it is the women, including Ella, who go in to battle right alongside the men, and in some cases leading the men, guns a blazing. In Cimino's move from the sovereign-individual to the power of the group unit, he also begins to disintegrate some of the ideas of gender roles. While I don't go as far as to call Cimino's film a "Marxist Western" as others have, it includes a more radical vision of society than nearly most other mainstream American films.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

In HG (rape) is a random act of violence from strangers. She comes on the scene unwittingly. Worse, because the character is a prostitute, there may be the assumption that this is less of a crime than of the virginal character in Once Upon... The idea that prostitutes engage in sex all the time with strangers for money, what difference did this make? Believe me: a big difference.

The rape of Isabelle Huppert's character wasn't a random act of violence though. Her name was on the death list compiled by the Stock Growers Association because she accepted stolen cattle as payment from customers. She was targeted by the mercenaries because they would be paid for killing her. The film isn't supporting the notion that it's okay to rape a woman because she's a prostitute and accepted stolen property, but that's the attitude of the mercenaries. The Association justifies their brutal actions as an attempt to impose law and order and they have the support of the government. The rape of Huppert's character shows how legally-sanctioned violence and denying suspected criminals their rights and humanity leads to sadistic abuses of power. As Kristofferson's character says, the real tragedy is that up until the rape of the women the Association were acting within their legal rights.

I do agree though that how the rape scene was filmed is problematic. Even if Cimino's intent was to depict the act as horrific any depiction of sexual violence on screen is bound to titillate some. I would have preferred that the scene be edited so that less time is spent showing the rape.

reply share

add reply

formatting help