Heaven's Gate Restored Edition 2 Discs [Blu-ray]

This film really is worthy of reassessment, it may now be one of my two favourite 1980s films (the other being the equally butchered-at-the-time Once Upon a Time in America). Beyond being visually stunning, the story itself is politically pretty radical, and as time passes I think this actually had a lot to do with why the East coast critics were so determined to destroy the film when it first came out-it has things to say about America that the liberal east coast elites didn't want to hear. The cinematography alone represents some of the greatest achievements in modern cinema, but the script is much better than most people remember, and the pacing in the directors cut makes a lot of sense. This is a film that creates space for both its actors and magnificent landscapes to breathe, even to act without speaking, and that requires time. The pattern of visual circles in the film-the literal dance of life and death-is also a fascinating conceit that never seems to be mentioned or complimented on.

Let me start by saying that Heaven's Gate is a marvellous film, and in no way deserving of the critical mauling it got on its release. Director Michael Cimino was criticised for bloating the Johnson County War, a relatively minor albeit brutal footnote in American history, into a three-hour-plus behemoth, but to do so is to miss what Cimino was trying to achieve. The film plays out as a requiem to the American frontier, and a paean to the visceral beauty of the West. The huge budget and Cimino's attention to detail are up there on the screen, and it looks wonderful. As with all great films, it isn't so much the events depicted that draw us in as the journey we're taken on to get there.Having read the reviews I was fearing there would be precious little plot amongst the cinematic eye-candy, but this is not the case at all. This is one of the most absorbing movies I have seen. Cimino takes his time setting up the story, and the slow-burning Kristofferson-Walken-Huppert love triangle serves to heighten the tension and sense of dread leading up to the climactic battle sequence. Leading man Kris Kristofferson turns in a quiet but mesmerising performance as marshall Jim Averill, backed up by a solid supporting cast. At three and a half hours running time, Heaven's Gate is a long and nuanced film that audiences at the time - at least in the US - were perhaps not ready for. It's no surprise that the film was warmly received in Europe, as its unconventional narrative structure and slow pacing had far more in common with the French New Wave than other Hollywood fare of the time.On to the UK blu-ray release from Second Sight. This is the sort of film that the format was made for. DP Vilmos Zsigmond's widescreen panoramas look fantastic, with saturated blue skies and green fields. The HD transfer, whilst sharp and detailed, does show up the limitations of the source material, with grain and occasional scratches and sparklies present. Some sequences show reduced contrast and blooming of light areas into dark, as if they were shot with a soft-focus lens - the opening scenes at Harvard are a good case in point - but I assume this was intentional. For audio we get a choice of stereo PCM and DTS-MA 5.1. I watched with the 5.1 option selected (the disc defaults to the stereo track), and whilst it's not the most dynamic track around given the age of the film, it does a good job of balancing dialogue with background effects and music cues. Most of the action does come from the front and centre speakers - the rears could have been utilised to better effect on some of the busy outdoor scenes. HG has been criticised for having a muffled soundtrack and dialogue, and this is another reason why the film works so much better today. With the benefit of a decent surround system I was able to follow characters speaking over the loud background noise present in a few scenes - Caspar, Wyoming being a good example - but it's easy to see that cinema audio circa 1980 would have struggled to separate dialogue from the prominent background mix.The Second Sight release comes with a DVD of bonus features, the most interesting of which is the "Final Cut" documentary detailing the film's disastrous debut and the resulting fallout on the Hollywood film industry. A few years later, studios were churning out high-concept audience-pleasing hits such as Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop, and producers - not directors - wielded creative control. I'll leave you to decide whether this is a good or bad thing.One final observation - the UK version of the film has a couple of small cuts for animal cruelty scenes, amounting to about a minute of running time, but in my opinion this does not spoil the film in any way.Overall this is a must-have blu-ray - it's great to see this most misunderstood classic of American cinema get the treatment it deserves on a Region B disc. (The US market has the Criterion Collection release, but it's expensive and as with all Criterion discs is locked to Region A.)

"Heavens Gate" stands like some long abandoned monolith to a strange long extinct race. Its beauty is undeniable but all understanding of its reason for existence gone. An enigma whose dark murky depths are hard to fathom. The film has gone down into legend for all the wrong reasons. Due to the directors grand vision the film went way over budget. On its initial release it was poorly reviewed and made a pittance. It led to the collapse of the prestigious United Artists studio and was a salutary lesson to the industry. Never was a director to have such control again and the shift went back to the studios. It is a lesson the studios still remember with clarity. Unfortunately the reputation of Michael Cimino was destroyed and he was never trusted by Hollywood afterwards.The film is set around the Johnson County War of 1890 in Wyoming. A true historical event but not on the epic scale portrayed in the film. The area is being flooded by European immigrants some of whom have been killing cattle to live. This upsets the local cattle barons who hire regulators to dispose of the worst offenders. Within this framework we have a love story between a prostitute Ella Watson played by Isabelle Huppert, Nate Champion a cowboy enforcer played by Christopher Walken and a sympathetic lawman Jim Averill played by Kris Kristofferson. The story heads to a tragic and bloody climax.Of the films characters, I have to say Walken as Champion is the most compelling. Kristofferson is a little stiff, but as Champion says of him "He has style", and he certainly does. An interesting cameo is thrown in by Joseph Cotten that old Welles favourite in one of his last roles. Jeff Bridges is excellent as ever as one of the immigrants. Mickey Rourke has an early appearence long before his recent resurgence in Aronofskys "The Wrestler". John Hurt also gives his usual impeccable performance as a friend of Jim from Harvard days. Overall a very strong cast.Today the film has been viewed by some as a revisionist Western and has made some respected top film lists. For myself I liken it to indulging in a very rich chocolate truffle after Christmas. So indulgent that I question whether I really needed it. The film is beautiful to look at. The dancing scenes seem to go on forever. The strangely choreographed dancing in the Harvard scenes owes more to Busby Berkley than a Western and must have cost a fortune. But to what end? Undeniably beautiful but was it necessary to the story? The film stands like a beautiful folly. Lovely to look at but what point. In the final analysis I enjoyed revisiting this film and would recommend it to you, history and all. Like some lovely paintings it is a thing of rare beauty.

everything

La Puerta del Cielo fue el tercer filme de Cimino y uno de los más golpeados por la prensa estadounidense por una sencilla razón: Cimino no era amigo de periodistas, ni de productores, ni de nadie, Cimino no estaba para complacerlos y en represalia lo tundieron a él y a la película a palos.Aunque hay que decir que Cimino tampoco es inocente, La Puerta del Cielo es una película compleja que por momentos puede llegar a parecer confusa y cansativa hasta para el cinéfilo más recalcitrante.La edición de Criterion Collection entrega la versión final aprobada por el director antes de su fallecimiento en 2016, por lo tanto, solo queda sentarse y ahogar la melancolía junto con la obra incomprendida de Michael Cimino.

I had never seen it, though wanted to in 1980. Then the reviews and the media. It is a good example of how great work can go unrecognized due to critics or propaganda. I didn't expect too much. I was concerned that the prologue went on and on. I thought, uh oh, the critics may be right. It could have been done in half the time, but now I see it as one of Cimino's scenes that must have moved him, and it has later significance in the film. Once it shifts to Kristofferson heading west it becomes a great adventure. Scenes that critics lambasted are the greatest scenes in the movie or any movie. The Waltz in the prologue and the roller skating scene can be watched again and again. The pace of the movie was how it should unfold, as a real look at the west. The cinematography is was moving and beautiful. So many shots looks like you would want to hang them on your wall. The length of the movie lets you relax and watch things unfold. The dialogue which Roger Ebert called long scenes of people staring aimlessly into space is the way real people talk. Their words are measured. The phony dialogue in many tv shows and movies is cookie cutter fast talk with all the latest cultural buzz words thrown in. Sometimes I say, "do the makers of these films even know how real people talk?" Text messaging dialogue I guess.Lastly I say that I am sad for Cimino and for the several others. It killed or slowed Kristofferson's acting career, even though his performance was very good. It ended Cimino's career to a great extent. The most tragic may be the 24 year old prodigy, David Mansfield, who wrote the mesmerizing score and other pieces, most notably the Heaven's Gate Waltz. He had been touring with Bob Dylan for 5 years. He submitted pieces for the film to use until it could get the real score. They had hired John Williams, who had done Star Wars 3 years prior. He decided to do a Boston Pops show instead. So they chose Mansfield. If the film had been given time to get edited as it is now, the film would have been much more popular, and Mansfield may have easily walked off the Oscar for best score. It gets in your head and stays. I compare it to Lawrence of Arabia in that regard. BTW, Mansfield is the "kid" that plays the violin and skates! Such talent! It is impossible to know how any of their careers would have gone if the movie was given a chance to be finished before it premiered.Christopher Walken survived well and has thrived. His performance is brilliant. His scene the bedroom with Isabelle Hubbert is just perfect. His tragic character, Nate Champion, who is really a good man turned bad. His ongoing angst in the presence of Hubbert is one of the saddest depiction of unrequited love, ever. He would easily been nominated for best supporting actor. Jeff Bridges who plays kind of a drunk buffoon, does it perfectly and is great here.I am surprised this is seen as some big political statement. There are no heroes or victims here. The immigrants were in a tough situation and we don't know why they chose or got placed there. But, they are not innocent by any means. They ARE stealing cattle. They trade cattle for sex, they get drunk and bet on cock fights rather than buy food for their families. And the cattlemen justify murder rather than a better solution. Both are despicable. But the immigrants did not have to be murdered that is why the good guys are on their side. So, I don't see it as a political statement at all.Mix that all together with some of the greatest scenery in Hollywood history it does truly become a masterpiece.

I know this is a flawed film. It's narrative feels almost non existent at many points. And the stories of its long, expensive and troubled production are the stuff of legend.But, despite all that I've always felt that Heavens Gate is a masterful film on a massive scale. It's honestly one of the most beautiful movies to look at from a production, set decoration and especially cinematography standpoint. And with this new Criterion bluray, the cinematography looks even better with the sepia filter taken off allowing the full color of the vast American landscape to really shine through without trying to give it that "old fashioned " look they were trying for originally.

A mio parere uno dei più grandi capolavori della storia del cinema. Apparentemente un western, ma denso di significati con innumerevoli sottotesti. Grandissime caratterizzazioni dei personaggi, tra tutti: Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert e Cristopher Walken sullo sfondo della guerra della Contea di Johnson. Un episodio minore, ingiustamente dimenticato dalla storiografia americana. In particolare la scena del valzer tra Kristofferson e Isabelle Hupperp merita di essere annoverata tra le più belle sequenze cinematografiche di sempre. Ho acquistato anche l'edizione francese che dovrebbe essere uguale a quella della Criterion, ovvero la versione restaurata e supervisionata da Cimino, mentre quella tedesca acquistata un anno fa, credo che non fosse restaurata, ma aveva il vantaggio della lingua originale insieme ai sottotitoli in inglese. Purtroppo il film è ancora inedito in Italia, a parte il bel libro monografico di Giampiero Frasca, dove purtroppo è inclusa solamente la versione in DVD.

Should have been in description that subtitles are ONLY in German.