How The West Was Won-Michael Cimino’s  “Heaven’s Gate”(1980)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Heavens’ Gate, starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walkens, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt and many other now well-known actors, directed by “The Deer Hunter’s Michael Cimino, 1980

Almost everybody is, and should be, fascinated by how the West, the  part of the United States west of the Mississippi as a convenient if not totally accurate landmark was settled, how in my terms the West was “won.” The cinematic view of that process has changed dramatically over the years reflecting changing sensibilities and an attempt at a true depiction of what was going on back then. Taking my own life cycle as a benchmark there was quite a changeover from the 1950s television and film versions when the good guys wore white and the black guys black and the “only good injun was a dead one (except maybe the Lone Ranger’s companion Tonto).” Later during the 1970s there was a drastic turnaround in order to show that there were all kinds of people who fled to the west after striking out in the East and that not all of them were all good-or all bad. Showed that the rough and tumble overall lawlessness of the places staked out were peopled by those who shunned white. One of the most important although damned at the time for being overlong, over budget, over-scripted and under-acted was Michael Cimino’s tale Heaven’s Gate  which after a recent viewing of four hours I am ready to declare  one of the great Westerns of all time, maybe one of the great films too. So the screw turns.           

The basic plotline which was loosely, very loosely, based on what in Western history has been called the Johnson County War (in fair Wyoming). Some of the story is overblown but the tensions between the various interests in the West-say cattle raising versus small truck farming were real and documented. Naturally as well there is love story (or maybe better a thwarted love story) to spice up the four hours when the gunfights and doings in town get overwrought.         

Here’s the play. After a long scene at a Harvard graduation where two of the main characters, Jim, played by ruggedly handsome Kris Kristofferson and Billy, played by John Hurt, are part of the class the film cuts to the heart of the matter some twenty years later. By then Jim is a Marshall up in rugged Wyoming country, Johnson County, and Billy is in the entourage of a cattle baron. In between is Nate, played by Christopher Walken, who is an enforcer for the cattlemen. The controversy involved what a hoard of immigrants were doing by stealing cattle that offended the cattlemen enough to put out a hit list of the leading immigrants and hire men to do the job in the “killing fields”. That information given to them by then non-committal Jimled the immigrants to fight what essentially was a range war. The end result was many deaths on both sides and eventually intervention by the U.S. Army to stop the fighting.

Interspersed along the way was the love story-the love both Nate and Jim had for Ella, a bordello Madame, and a beauty played by Isabelle Huppert. She goes back and forth between the two-Nate wants to marry her and Jim wants her to leave with him since there was nothing left for her there. See she was on that cattlemen’s list. In the end everybody loses. Nate is killed in a raging inferno at his cabin after taking vengeance on the leading cattlemen’s crew who had raped Ella. Jim, after deciding to side with the immigrants and lead them against the cattlemen’s mercenaries, persuaded Ella to leave but before they could do so she was killed by some mercenaries. Jim is shown some years’ later Newport wealthy but seemingly cast adrift after Ella had passed away.

Along with way are some great scenes starting with a grand ballroom dance on the lawn at Harvard on graduation day, the rough and tumble of a new town being created, and the fighting between the two uneven forces. Yeah, whatever the critics thought in 1980 they missed out on watching one of the great Western film masterpieces.