MovieChat Forums > Heaven's Gate (1981) Discussion > Absolutly no reason this movie should be...

Absolutly no reason this movie should be longer than 90 min

posted 13 years ago by sith56
2 replies | jump to latest

It seems the director was far more concerned with making Heaven's Gate beautiful, historically accurate and immersing the audience in the tumultuous period than telling the central story of the immigrant "death list". A well received final cut could have been 1hr 30 min in more capable hands.

[–] bstephens21 13 years ago

taking Heaven's Gate beautiful, historically accurate and immersing the audience in the tumultuous period

A) There's nothing absolutely wrong with either one of those goals, and it takes real talent to pull off either.

and

B) All three goals are in fact necessary for "telling the central story" of this film.

And perhaps a 90 minute could be made... so what? Who says a film needs to be 90 minutes? Who says moving a story along is the only aim of the cinematic medium? The plots of most films can summed up in a paragraph... should directors just give up filmmaking and start writing IMDB synopses profesionally?

[–] Alfabeta 13 years ago

It had actual content for about 2h, yeah. And he would have been able to keep his point and the atmosphere with that length easily. There are hours of stupid/pointless scenes here and cutting them out would've taken nothing away from the good parts (and fortunately there are those as well:).
You could argue that the editing was the main cause of this film's downfall more than anything else.