I'd say overall "Days of Heaven", "McCabe" and "Barry Lydon" are three perfect films and I consider all three to be 3 of the greatest ever made and the three films that are the prospective best films of their creators (the best films of Malick, Altman and Kubrick, which is saying alot). But I also realize I love and have bias toward historical films usually that exude a visionary bent and are striving for authenticity photographically and in design (as you mentioned with the lenses created for "Barry Lyndon" to achieve that authentic look, or the high exposure to the negative done to get the look in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" for instance)
"Heaven's Gate" is nowhere near that close. It has many flaws that those films don't have: its got pacing issues, scenes that do seem unnecessary, untrue and over the top (usually in scenes where intimate dialog/character development is taking place between actors in a room--Kris Kristopherson is also just a lame-duck actor in my opinion who can't sing or act and I would have never cast him in any role, especially the lead...hell, I'll even take Sam Eliott or Tommy L. Jones in terms of 'cowboy typecasts' over Kris Kristopherson..hell, I'll even take Ryan *beep* O'Neal as a cowboy over him, lol:)
It could be argued that it might not be even Michael Cinimo's best film: both "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" and "Deer Hunter" have much stronger acting, characters that are better fleshed-out, and a narrative that's more coherent in my opinion.
Where "Heaven's Gate" is a wonder is in the visuals: the photography(which let's give as much credit to the director as we will Vilmos Zigmund, of "McCabe" fame and a photographer of many great works of the 1970's and beyond), the choreography and the sets (you can always see every cent of the $44,000,000 budget was used)--- In the scenes of crowds, and community and dance. Cinimo knows how to control a vast crowd and pack a frame with the rhythmic sprawl and motion that comes with human life better than almost anyone. The battle scenes are still widely criticized, but I'll say it is utterly authentic...a western frontier war in the Wyoming summer would look exactly that: a brutal dust of carnage and chaos.
"Go balls deep, Dad!"
-Scotty Crane
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bobbo_says
12 years ago
I'll quibble and say you can't call the three films "perfect" and then go on to list their defects. Substantively, I'll give you Kristopherson but O'Neal? I have to draw the line with O'Neal. ..... Hmmmm!?! He was perfectly fine in Lyndon. And Kristopherson is great at playing wooden characters.
Maybe it all in the camera angles?
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