Heaven's Gate (film)



""It's getting dangerous to be poor in this country.""

- John L. Bridges

Heaven's Gate, starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Jeff Bridges, is best known as the film that destroyed the career of its director and writer Michael Cimino, who went way over budget on the movie. Its box office performance was so poor that the combined effect of the high budget and low income sent United Artists into deep financial trouble. It saw a very limited release in 1980 before going wider in 1981.

The film itself tells the tale of two Wyoming men, Sheriff James Averill and gunslinger Nathan Champion. Averill's lawful duty is to keep the peace between immigrants and rich farmers, while Champion is the farmers' means of lethal property protection. Both are in love with the same woman, a madam who falls on the farmers' "hit list." As a result, they end up opposing the farmers and join the immigrants' side in the subsequent Johnson County War. Let's just say this battle is a long one.


 * Distant Finale: The last scene shows Averill on his yacht off the coast of Rhode Island 13 years later.
 * Downer Ending:
 * Epic Movie: Cimino clearly wanted this to be his Ben-Hur.
 * Final Speech: Nathan Champion writes a letter containing this to his friends in a burning cabin. No need to guess what exactly is wrong with that.
 * Attacked by contemporary critics as unrealistic, ironically this is one of the few elements true to the historical events on which the film was loosely based.
 * Leave the Camera Running: Constantly, and to a degree never seen before or since in the history of film. In particular, the original cut of the movie includes one long continuous battle sequence that lasts over an hour.
 * No Animals Were Harmed - Caused a huge stink that led to this being a required part of all movie end credits. The American Humane Association brought numerous cases against the movie asserting horses were mistreated, bled, and in one instance BLOWN UP ON CAMERA.
 * Oscar Bait: As hard as the film tried, it only managed a single nomination for Art Direction.
 * Real Is Brown: Especially in some of the earlier scenes. Naturally this doesn't improve the quality of shots where the frame is dominated by dust and smoke.
 * Scenery Porn: The cinematography is lavish, but spoiled by the directly above-mentioned trope.
 * Shown Their Work: One of the reasons the film cost so much was that Cimino was obsessed with getting all the period details right.
 * In fact, a promotional tie-in with Kodak film quoted him as saying, "If you don't get it right, what's the point?"
 * Of course, this trope was so abundant that people refused to accept its little quirks as "real" at all. Cimino tended to abandon generic verisimilitude in favor of being "accurate", in turn ignoring a lot of things that people expect (or want) to see in a western. See Final Speech above for a good example, as well as the widespread criticism regarding the infamous roller skate dance scene.