Desperate Hours

You can always depend on the fanatics in the front rows at MoMA to be an active part of whatever's showing, and the other night—Halloween—they delivered. The movie was Heaven's Gate, introduced by Isabelle Huppert, which had them in even more than their usual tizzy—particularly Harvey Schwartz, the giggly timekeeper of the Cinemania gang, whom I found myself sitting next to.

In the minutes before Michael Cimino's eternally damned epic began, Harvey told me and everyone else within earshot (he's loud) that this would be his fourth time seeing it, that the seat he was in (third row center) was his seat, and pity the fool he ever finds sitting there. He made sure we all knew he was in Cinemania. He alerted us that the boyish composer of Heaven's Gate, David Mansfield, was also an actor in the movie. He reminisced about the time at the Public Theater he yelled at the guy behind him to keep it down—Nestor Almendros. And he clutched his digital stopwatch in fidgety anticipation, since he times every movie he sees.

Huppert, who looked tiny and string-beany in her jeans and cat-eye glasses and leather jacket, introduced the film as a visionary masterpiece, and proclaimed Cimino "one of the great geniuses of cinema." She said Heaven's Gate had been re-released in France last June to acclaim, and that it had failed here because it "says things about America that America wasn't ready to hear." "Maybe you're ready now," she said.

More likely America wasn't ready for a nearly four-hour movie about immigrant laborers being brutalized by cattle barons in 1890 Wyoming, even one with great shootouts and magnificent landscapes and Isabelle Huppert naked. Heaven's Gate isn't the "unqualified disaster" Vincent Canby dubbed it upon its premiere twenty-five years ago this month—visually, at least, it's amazing—but it's certainly ungainly. It didn't help that Harvey was constantly moving his hands as if he were the movie's conductor, or that he kept pointing out bits of trivia, such as Willem Dafoe's momentary appearance as an extra. The dialogue is pretty stiff, too, but I did feel a shock of recognition and resonance when Jeff Bridges asks, "It's getting dangerous to be poor, isn't it?" Maybe Cimino's heart was in the right place after all.

Comments

[Filmbrain]

(Funny thing is, I saw Harvey and Isabelle having a rather intimate moment over a bottle of ’97 Chateau Haut-Brion at Pastis later that night.)

I saw the restored version in Berlin earlier this year, and to see it on the big screen was phenomenal. I've always been a champion of this film, even for its excesses. But then again, I also love Year of the Dragon.

[Campaspe]

Another post that I enjoyed the hell out of. Loved the link to the "Cinemania" review. How did this doc pass me by? Due to my everyday identity as an Overwhelmed Mom I tend to stress more over the films I don't get to see than any OCD tendencies to see too many. Still, if Harvey is a cinephile, what the heck is he doing talking through the movie? Tsk, tsk.

As for Heaven's Gate -- I saw a supposedly somewhat less butchered version (about three hours or so) on VHS a long while ago and I still thought it had a great deal of merit. Your analysis is really spot-on. Huppert also has a point. It is a really dark and unpleasant look at U.S. history. By 1980 we all knew we'd done the Indians dirty but it is painful to have someone hammer home that the settlers even treated each other badly.

And now Filmbrain has me wondering if I should see Year of the Dragon. I had an Asian friend who hated it so much that I never bothered.

[Filmbrain]

I can fully understand why your friend would hate it. It is indeed quite racist, but as far as 80s films go (a dreadful decade) it's a far cry better than most. Plus, I was living in California at the time, and seeing NYC on film made me homesick.

[la_depressionada]

i loved year of the dragon. incredibly stylish flick. and remember when mickey rourke was a promising young actor? his turn in body heat? riveting.