Heaven's Gate

[hnpcc]

So I went to see Heaven's Gate on the weekend. This would be the new almost-directors cut edition, which means to say all 4 hours of it rather than the shorter released version.

There's been a lot of revision of the initial impression of Heaven's Gate going on, at least in Melbourne Film Circles. People have been mentioning the words "under-rated" and "critically assassinated".

I have to say after watching it it's still a bit of a mess.

I dunno. It's a very slow movie, with the pace more reminiscent of The Leopard than your usual Hollywood fare. The pace, at times, could even be described as glacial.

There are two story threads - the Johnson County War and a love triangle - that should be strong enough to hold the supporting themes.

The cinematography is often fantastic, although it's kind of hard to make Montana look all that bad.

But it still just didn't gel for me. The stories went nowhere, and weren't developed enough for me to care. There were entire characters who we had no idea about, although we generally recognised the faces enough to go "Oh him" when they got shot. Well apart from the somewhat confusing facial hair which meant that I thought everyone looked like Brad Pitt.

The love triangle fared somewhat better but took a while to get going and then was over too soon.

And the themes.. well to be honest I didn't care enough about them. The cattlemen are hiring mercenaries to shoot Russian emigrants? OK. Class war? Barely developed. Government complicity in mass murder... mentioned, but not really enough to go anywhere with. Kris Kristofferson's betraying his class? What the hell's he doing as law enforcement in rural Montana when he graduated from Harvard anyway? Christopher Walken as a gunslinger though, that was fun.

It probably didn't help that we had two elderly ladies behind us who were doing a stream-of-consciousness commentary on the film ("do you think she's dead? Oh she's moving her foot.. maybe she's alive.. she's opened her eyes..." and "Oh look, snow!")

It had such potential. It really did. But it needed a lot more character and story development. Oh and adding subtitles for the 15 or so minutes when people were arguing in Russian, German and various other languages without translation might have helped ("I think they're arguing.. oh look he's shot him! and now they're off to get their guns.")

Stylistically it was very pretty. But frankly they could have lost the opening bit at Harvard, Billy (completely - what a useless waste of an actually partially developed character), the epilogue, the rollerskating dance, and quite a few of the more drawn out romantic "let's watch Isabelle Huppert in the nude" scenes (OK, YMMV on that one) and spent some time actually trying to get to the stories.

The futility of war came across quite well. But overall it looked and felt a bit like a very slow Albert Pyun movie (and not just because Kris Kristofferson was in it.)

Fortunately I didn't pay for this, a AussieChris got a double free pass from his housemate who works for a radio station. And hey, the horse with giant erection moment was worth it for me...

Comments

[numbat.livejournal.com]

A quick check via Google reveals that Isabelle Huppert is indeed not worth seeing nude. You have my word as an expert in these matters.

[hnpcc]

Remember it was over 20 years ago. She was quite good looking, I just didn't need her getting nude quite so quickly and for quite so long!

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should elaborate, it wasn't a matter of age because she didn't look that old in the photos I saw, it was of being too thin. WHile I can think of at least one thin woman I find attractive she's somebody I know personally and would find attrractive regardless of body shape. In general women on tv and in movies are too thin and only catch my eye for reasons other than the physical. Willow in Buffy would be a good example, that character's shy and uncertain manner was very attractive.