MovieChat Forums > Heaven's Gate (1981) Discussion > So were they married the whole time or n...

So were they married the whole time or not?

posted 11 years ago by mjscarface
7 replies | jump to latest

OK, so I finally saw the film last night, the director's cut. Liked it overall and I think it works well, despite some painfully drawn out scenes (the lingering looks and awkward silences made me think I was watching a Ryan Gosling film at first). It was an easy film to admire but a hard film to be emotionally engaged by, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway...

*spoilers*
The woman at the end is clearly the same one from the prologue and it's clear that she and Averill are a proper couple in the epilogue. My question is were they married the whole time he was working in Johnson County?

I think they could have been. First of all, Jim keeps their photo with him even though he'd surely be smitten by Ella. Why else would he do that unless they married?

I like the idea that Jim married into his own class before setting out to become a lawman in Johnson County. Then, during the subsequence years he discovers he has more in common with Ella and the immigrants and doesn't want to go back to his old life. When everyone is killed, he reluctantly returns to that old life and a loveless marriage.

I find this theory easier to buy into rather than he simply sought out the girl following the Johnson County war.

"The only place I get hurt... is out there." - 'The Wrestler'

[–] www.wedd 11 years ago

That's a really good question, something that hadn't occurred to me during the film (which I saw on the big screen the other day - amazing), but makes a lot of sense, although there are other ways of interpreting it. For instance, the events of the film could so easily have been a dream - perhaps hers, perhaps Averill's - he is shown sleeping several times.
The fact that he keeps her photo could just be a memento of earlier times, when he was more innocent, when he was closer to living up to the received notions of what a person of his class should be.
Of course, if she is his wife, when would he see her? He seems to be indefinitely posted in Johnson County, and there's no sense of another life somewhere.
I don't necessarily subscribe to any of these theories, by the way - one is as good as another for me!
Loved the film, by the way, it's been tragically underrated, on a purely visual and aural level it stuns, and in terms of story it's a lot more thought-out and sophisticated than given credit for - but it will be forever doomed to be associated with the scandal of its making, and there's nothing can be done about that, for the foreseeable future at least.

[–] myturn21 11 years ago

DUDE!!! You got to see it in a theatre??? DAMN!!! 16 shades of green with envy right now!!!

I don't think they were married, or if Jim did marry her right after graduation, they'd since divorced before the events in Johnson Co began. However, I think you're right: Jim probably kept her picture to remind himself of, as Billy puts it, "the good gone days". Jim wasn't completely beholden to Ella, their relationship was one of love & friendship but the story is about how they can't seem to take the next step & commit fully to each other b/c she runs the local brothel & is torn btwn Jim & Nick Champion.

In the end, he made the choice to find her again & possibly marry her, we don't know. But he still didn't look very happy in the final scene.

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ARRET! C'est ici l'empire de la mort!

[–] myselfandi 11 years ago

Yeah, I think they were married the whole time too, which makes Ella's comment to Averill about always being faithful to him just weird.

[–] maxman-5 11 years ago

I never thought about that, and wondered about the picture (they showed it more than once, even zoomed in, AND it was there on the yacht!). That could be the reason he couldn't/wouldn't ask her to marry him. Great theory mjscarface!

[–] okidoll821 11 years ago

I took it as a wedding photo. I think he was married.

[–] Eponymous-too 10 years ago

I assumed they had been married the entire time, which is another reason why he wouldn't ask Ella to marry him.

"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

[–] Vagabear 10 years ago

The photo was one taken at the graduation at the beginning - or while he was at school before that. Needless to say that since the prologue and epilogue were shot last - that the photo that Averill has out in Wyoming is a rather bad mock-up (looks more like a clean shaven Walken than Kristofferson in the photo.)

Having said that - Averill has clearly gotten back together with the girl from the graduation by the end of the film. While lovely and radiant in youth - she's turned out to be a rather vain, slothful individual - and regretfully - Averill realizes this.

Audiences at the time of the original release were so apathetic to the film, that by the end, they reportedly had no idea who the girl at the end was. In recutting - shortening and drastically and mercilessly revising his masterpiece - Cimino clearly soul-searched how to drive home an ending that a dumb, general audience could understand. He jettisoned the shocking ending to the body of the film - and recut bits of it into the epilogue as a series of visual memory flashbacks for Averill - AND - TOTALLY cut around the scene so as to TOTALLY and COMPLETELY remove the girl lounging the cabin - so in fact, Averill is alone on his yacht at the end of the film in the 2nd (1981) cut.