MovieChat Forums > Heaven's Gate (1981) Discussion > I'm sorry but...

I'm sorry but...

posted 12 years ago by joet1999
3 replies | jump to latest

This film does not deserve 6.6, it is far better than most films in the top 250 (at least 150 of them). I really can't understand why people hate it so. The cinematography is stunning, as if the set decoration, the acting is very good, particularly Walken. Cimino is a brilliant director and this is (in my eyes) he second best outing. Although it may not be as good as The Deer Hunter it is still a MASTERPIECE, a really brilliant epic. I just don't get it with critics of the film, I'm sure it is just because they assume what they are going to give it before watching as it has a bad reputation. I really wish this film was more loved.

'Loneliness has followed me my whole life' - Travis Bickle Taxi Driver

[–] famousmortimer-2 12 years ago

I'm with you. The film has been the butt of decades worth of jokes as well as worst-of lists. Wrongheaded and ignorant, all of them.

While it may not have the same sort of intimacy as THE DEER HUNTER, that seems to be by design. The scale of the film is tremendous and the main characters all occupy different social stations. Gone is the quaint yet restorative Clairton and its merry band of blue collar friends. Instead we get a vast frontier populated by various groups of haves and have-nots, some less honorable than others, with Sweetwater as the locus of an inevitable slaughter.

In THE DEER HUNTER, viewers can get swept up in the drama without letting the film's dismal worldview register as an indictment of society. HEAVEN'S GATE, on the other hand, doesn't allow for such a blinkered viewing experience. You can't watch it without coming away with a profound sense of intolerance, injustice, and corruption. Characters, not to mention entire scenes, confront the issue head-on -- the psychopathic greed and warped notion of duty that drives the powerful to subjugate and eradicate the powerless.

[–] myturn21 12 years ago

I've always thought it was better than The Deer Hunter. TDH always felt disjointed & slow to me. Long boring wedding, long boring hunting trip. The scenes in Vietnam were good (then again, I have a deep interest in films that show combat in Vietnam) & then the film slows down to a crawl again until Mike visits Steven & figures out where Nicky is & goes back to Saigon to find him.

In Heaven's Gate I found the story to be more consistently engaging. Cimino could have trimmed several scenes & tightened the storyline quite a bit to be sure, but the pacing of TDH was so slow in spots that it took a few different sittings to get thru it.

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"ARRÊT! C'est l'empire de la mort!"

[–] cultfilmfreaksdotcom 11 years ago

That "long boring wedding" was about people we got to know beforehand, and was, in my opinion, much better than the long boring Harvard sequence and dance sequence with characters we didn't even know, and would never get to know. I feel that Heaven's Gate is worse than its reputation.

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