That's not true.
The bad press is largely responsible for the 'hate' it got first.
Cimino & the producers didn't allow any reporters on set and didn't give any interviews, therefore
they started to make up negative stuff & scandals.
One of the major issues people have with the film is not the amount spent on it, but the amount spent pointlessly. Take for example the Harvard sequence - all those extras, all those costumes, all that time and expense, and for what? What bearing does it have on the rest of the film?
This is an interesting comment, because it shows how much Americans don't understand the aesthetics of this film.
Is the Harvard prolog really pointless ?
No, because...
-it introduces the relationship between K.K. and John Hurt.
-It introduces the rich girl, that will become his wife at the end (not the prostitute he really loved).
-The prolog articulates a major theme of the film: "The education of a nation" by the leading elite
as a moral responsibility. But we will later see, that this class has no intention to do so.
-The prolog shows off the unbelievable prosperity of a small elite in America. It's a great contrast to the poverty
of the immigrants later. In short: You get to see class differences.
-On a purely aesthetic level the long dance is important, too, because it's a leitmotif, that will be repeated 2 more times in the film:
The dance on roller-skates showing class mobility, then at the end the "dance of death", motivated by a similar greed of the
upper class to 'get the goods' hanging on the tree of American society, no matter what.
The three dances are an organizing principle, like you usually only find it in musicals.
But Cimino does it in a western.
It's unique for this genre.
It's visual and poetic storytelling.
This is all quite a lot for 20 minutes.
The movie would be poorer without it.
And the epilog would make no sense anymore, because it echoes the prolog.
The movie is structured like a novel or a musical or a ballet or an opera.
Cimino made an avant-garde western that merges classic Hollywood genre with other art forms.
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8 years ago
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col_rutherford
8 years ago
If the epilogue without the prologue makes no sense, then remove the epilogue as well.
The prologue and epilogue were important to the film in my opinion. The prologue shows the protagonist James Averill as a young, idealistic man who seems to have a promising future ahead of him. This contrasted with the middle aged Averill we see in the bulk of the movie. Averill is still trying to do good, but he's frustrated, world-weary, and unhappy about getting older. By the end of the movie Averill is disillusioned and heartbroken. He returns to the east and resumes a life of wealth and privilege. He is married to a woman who looks like the beautiful girl he idealized as a young man, but she turns out to be lazy and spoiled. To me, Averill's miserable look at the end is that of a man who realizes that he's lost everything that really mattered to him - his youth, his ideals, the people he cared about it - and that all his money and material possessions can't fill the hole in his heart.
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naples-884-346409
8 years ago
Maybe the prolog is a little too long, but it's not pointless, that's for sure.
I totally agree with 'Col. Rutherford'.
He is married to a woman who looks like the beautiful girl he idealized as a young man, but she turns out to be lazy and spoiled. To me, Averill's miserable look at the end is that of a man who realizes that he's lost everything that really mattered to him
I read the last page of Cimino's screenplay for "Heaven's Gate" and it IS
supposed to be the girl from the beginning.
In the film it's more ambivalent now, but it's the same actress, isn't it?
And Avrill cries at the very end, but this is not in the final film, I think.
Read it here:
http://www.cinephiliabeyond.org/michael-ciminos-heavens-gate-teaches-us-great-art-ultimately-triumphs-no-matter-circumstances/
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Outstandingness
8 years ago
Cimino & the producers didn't allow any reporters on set and didn't give any interviews, therefore
from reading the book Final Cut, that was Cimino's wish to have the press banned. Aside from that the prolog
ue could've achieved that in shorter time without all the lavish production.
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