Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

19 August 2022

Heaven's Gate (1980)


Heaven's Gate
, Michael Cimino's infamous follow-up to The Deer Hunter, got a bad rap, y'all. This movie is difficult, for sure, and the long first act in New England doesn't really make much sense until the second and third acts, but this film has some really great stuff in it. I especially loved the performances of Kris Kristofferson and Jeff Bridges (he's superb in this). And, of course, Isabelle Huppert is wonderful. I really enjoyed this movie, and I found myself deeply moved during the sequence when they read the names of all of the immigrant men on the kill list. This is a pretty extraordinary portrait of racism and capitalism and the way they worked together in this particular period in U.S. American history, and it's a masterfully made movie. I watched this on DVD - from the Criterion release - in its Cimino-approved three-and-a-half-hour version.

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