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Post by rick on Jul 2, 2016 18:14:40 GMT -5
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Post by erik on Jul 2, 2016 18:40:46 GMT -5
A very sad passing of a director...even if, because of HEAVEN'S GATE, nobody wants to acknowledge it. Besides directing that film, THE DEER HUNTER, and THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, he also co-wrote the scripts for MAGNUM FORCE (the second Dirty Harry film), and the 1972 cult science fiction classic SILENT RUNNING.
Having seen HEAVEN'S GATE on DVD a couple of times in the three and a half hour version that would seem to be the most legitimate, I can say that the roasting that the film got, which basically amounted to a public incineration, was not really justified. To me, the problem with the film isn't its being too long (complaints about that indicate an audience with ADD in my opinion), it is that Cimino was trying to do this story of the infamous Johnson County war between ethnic range settlers and corporate cattle owners in 1890s Wyoming as if he were making GONE WITH THE WIND and not a Western, which is really what HEAVEN'S GATE is at its core. I feel he should have taken a closer look at films like ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and THE WILD BUNCH, and used them as examples of solid Western films that, in the filming and then the editing process, grew into epics in their final forms. I also think Cimino overdid the scale of things he shot; and all the available evidence says that he took way too long to shoot, and shot far too many takes on single shots that could have been done the right way in fewer than ten. There's no question that HEAVEN'S GATE was a byword for Hollywood directorial excesses, rightly or wrongly, in its era. And yet, compared to what obscene examples of excess we tend to see every couple of weeks in theatres these days. I would consider that film a flawed and very slow but still hugely intriguing film.
And while it is true that HEAVEN'S GATE is undergoing a reassessment that is way overdue, I do hope people check out the other things that Cimino has done. He was a problematic figure to be sure, but now that he's gone, an entire reassessment of his career is in order (IMHO).
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