First released in 1981 and then re-released in several different versions since then, Heaven’s Gate begins at Harvard University.

The year is 1870 and the graduates of Harvard have got their entire future ahead of them.  At the graduation ceremony, Joseph Cotten gives a speech about how, as men of cultivation, they have an obligation to help the uncultivated.  Student orator Billy Irvine (John Hurt) then gives a speech  in which he jokingly says the exact opposite.  Amongst the graduates, Billy’s friend, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), laughs at Billy’s speech.  It’s a bit of a strange scene, if just because all of the graduates appear to be teenagers except for Hurt and Kristofferson, who are both clearly in their 30s.  The graduates of Harvard sing to their girlfriends and dance under a tree and, for a fleeting moment, all seems to be right with the world.

Twenty years later, all seems to be wrong with the world.  Averill is now the rugged and world-weary marshal of Johnson Country, Wyoming.  Cattle barons are trying to force immigrant settlers to give up their land.  Gunmen, like Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke), are accepting contracts to execute immigrants who are suspected of stealing cattle.  When Averill stands up for the people of Johnson Country, the head of the Wyoming Stock Grower Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), hires a group of mercenaries to ride into Johnson County and execute 125 settlers.  Billy Irvine, who now is dissolute alcoholic who works with Canton, warns his old friend Averill.  Averill, who has fallen in love with Ella (Isabelle Huppert), the local madam, announces that he will defend the immigrants.  Nate, who is also in love with Ella, considers changing sides.

Heaven’s Gate is loosely based on an actual event.  I actually have three distant ancestors who traveled to Wyoming to take part in the Johnson County War.  All three of them survived, though one of them was shot and killed in an unrelated manner shortly after returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas.  That said, director Michael Cimino is clearly not that interested in the historical reality of the Johnson County War or the issues that it raised.  Just as he did with Vietnam in The Deer Hunter, Cimino uses the Johnson County War as a way to signify a loss of national innocence.  Averill and Irvine start the film as hopeful “young” men with the future ahead of them.  By the end of the film, one is dead and the other is living on a yacht and dealing with what appears to be crippling ennui.

Heaven’s Gate is a bit of an infamous film.  Though the film was pretty much a standard western, Cimino still went far over-budget and turned in a first cut that was over six hours long.  A four hour version was briefly released in 1980 but withdrawn after a week, due to terrible reviews and audience indifference.  A studio-edited version that ran for two hours and 35 minutes got the widest release in 1981.  Since then, there have been several other versions released.  Cimino’s director’s cut, which was released as a part of the Criterion Collection in 2012, runs for 212-minutes and is considered to now be the “official” version of Heaven’s Gate.

For years, Heaven’s Gate had a terrible reputation.  It’s failure at the box office was blamed for bankrupting United Artists.  After the excesses of the Heaven’s Gate production, studios were far more reluctant to just give a director a bunch of money and let him run off to make his movie.  (They should have learned their lesson with Dennis Hopper and The Last Movie.)  Described by studio execs as being self-indulgent and even mentally unstable, Michael Cimino’s career never recovered and the director of The Deer Hunter went from being an Oscar-winner to being an industry pariah.  (Some who disliked The Deer Hunter’s perceived jingoistic subtext claimed that Heaven’s Gate proved The Deer Hunter was just an overrated fluke.)  However, the reputation of Heaven’s Gate has improved, especially with the release of Cimino’s director’s cut.  Many critics have praised Heaven’s Gate for its epic portrayal of the west and, ironically given the controversy over The Deer Hunter, its political subtext.  It’s anti-immigrant villains made the film popular amongst the Resistance-leaning film historians during the first Trump term.

So, is Heaven’s Gate a masterpiece or a disaster?  To be honest, it’s somewhere in between.  Whereas it was once over-criticized, it’s now over-praised.  Visually, it’s a beautiful film but those who complained that the film was too slow had a point.  As with The Deer Hunter, Cimino takes the time to introduce us to and immerse us in a tight-knit immigrant community.  Personally, I like the much-criticized scenes of the fiddler on skates and Averill and Ella dancing in the roller rink.  Overall though, as opposed to The Deer Hunter, the members of the film’s victimized community still feel less like individual characters and more like symbols.  As for the political subtext, I think that any subtext of that sort is accidental.  (I feel the same way about The Deer Hunter, which I like quite a bit more than Heaven’s Gate.)  Cimino is more interested in the loss of innocence than whether or not the Johnson County War can be fit into some sort of nonsense Marxist framework.

The main problem with the film is that there is no center to keep everything grounded.  Kris Kristofferson had a definite screen presence but, as an actor who was incapable of showing a great deal of emotion, he lacks the gravitas necessary to keep from being swallowed up by Cimino’s epic pretensions.  Isabelle Huppert, an otherwise great actress, also feels lost in the role of Ella and Sam Waterston is not necessarily the most-intimidating villain to ever show up in a western.  Christopher Walken, as the enigmatic and intriguing Nate Champion, gives the best performance in the film but his character still feels largely wasted.

There are some brilliant visual moments to be found in Heaven’s Gate.  I even like the Harvard prologue and the ending on the boat, both of which are not technically necessary to the narrative but still add an extra-dimension to both Averill and Irvine.  But, in the end, Heaven’s Gate is big when it should have been small and epic when its should have been intimate.  It’s a misfire but not a disaster.  Even great directors occasionally have a film that just doesn’t work.  Speilberg had his 1941.  Scorsese has had a handful.  Coppola’s career has been a mess but no one can take his successes away from him.  Michael Cimino, who passed away in 2016, deserved another chance.