There are few films more infamous than Heaven’s Gate. The brainchild of once Hollywood superstar Michael Cimino, the film served as his follow-up to the acclaimed Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter. Its sweep at the 1979 Academy Awards saw Cimino walking away with the Oscar for both Best Picture and Best Director, a triumph that earned him total creative freedom with Heaven’s Gate. What followed was one of the most chaotic shoots in cinematic history, falling behind schedule almost immediately to the tune of an ever-increasing budget. Tales of Cimino’s dictatorial behavior have become the stuff of film infamy, ranging from refusing to begin filming until the clouds drifted to a position he liked to demanding an entire set be demolished and then rebuilt because it looked slightly wrong. It poisoned his relationship with United Artists, but Cimino remained committed to his vision, confident he was making a masterpiece.

Michael Cimino's Hubris

The critics disagreed. The resulting three-and-a-half-hour film was panned upon release and wildly cited as amongst the worst ever made. The reaction was so dire the studio took the unprecedented decision to pull it from theaters, hack off an hour of footage, and then dump it back six months later - but the damage had been done. Heaven’s Gate became one of the biggest box office disasters ever, an outcome that killed more than just Cimino’s career. It also served as the final nail for New Hollywood, a form of American filmmaking that had dominated since the mid-1960s. Its director-driven approach and liberal use of taboo content allowed some of America’s greatest minds to thrive in ways that the studio system would never have allowed for, but this lack of restraint did not sit well with producers. The hellish production of Apocalypse Now (combined with an increasing number of box office disappointments) raised serious questions about the movement's sustainability – questions that the utter failure of Heaven’s Gate answered overnight. There aren’t many films that can claim to have destroyed an entire method of filmmaking, but Michael Cimino managed the unimaginable, turning Heaven’s Gate into a damning statement on artistic hubris that shows why creative restrictions are necessary when tackling projects of this scale.

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Image via United Artists

'Heaven's Gate' Gets a New Appreciation

But then, something unexpected happened. Opinions of the film started to change, first from negative to positive and then even further. A new 216-minute version became a staple at film festivals, earning widespread acclaim and instigating a general re-evaluation of the film. In 2015, the BBC ranked it as one of the greatest American films ever made, and in a move once considered unthinkable, the term ‘masterpiece’ even started to make a comeback. While this reassessment has not received universal acknowledgment, the fact that it’s happening at all is worthy of discussion. It’s not uncommon for the reception of a film to change over time, but a film shifting from one end of the critical spectrum to the opposite is unheard of – a feat that makes Heaven’s Gate even more fascinating.

RELATED: The Wild and True Story of Making Michael Cimino’s Epic Western ’Heaven’s Gate'

What Is 'Heaven's Gate' About?

Despite its epic runtime, the plot of Heaven’s Gate is relatively simple. The year is 1890, and the poor European immigrants of Johnson County, Wyoming, are in conflict with the local cattle barons (known collectively as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association) after being branded as thieves and anarchists. The head of the Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterson) tells of a plan to kill 125 of these settlers to restore peace to the county – a plan signed off by the President of the United States himself. This brings them into conflict with Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), a marshal in Johnson County and once a close friend of one of the Association’s key members, Billy Irvine (John Hurt). Aided by the entrepreneur John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges), Averill rallies the citizens of the county to fend off the menace, all the while vying for the heart of brothel madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert) against his friend and occasional enemy, Nate Champion (Christopher Walken). While the story does have roots in historical events, Cimino takes so many liberties that the truth extends only to the names of the main characters. But he wouldn’t be the first person to tell a true story that’s a pack of lies, and as the framework to explore this rich period of American history, it works perfectly well.

Even though the film contains all the hallmarks of the western genre – honor-bound marshals, gun-toting outlaws, small frontier towns being threatened by the encroaching weight of civilization, etc. – Cimino goes out of his way to downplay them as much as possible, resulting in Heaven’s Gate feeling more like an anti-western. For a story about a civil war between Johnson County and the rest of the United States, there’s a distinct lack of action for most of the proceedings. The first death doesn’t occur until we’ve cleared the two-hour mark, long after the point many westerns will be done rolling the credits, and Averill does little during this time to prepare for the incoming battle à la The Magnificent Seven. Instead, he seems more interested in fighting for Watson’s affection, turning Heaven’s Gate into a doomed romance where the viewer is left wondering who (if anyone) will be left with a happy ending. The sequence where the pair go rollerblading is the film’s most infamous moment, and while it does see the narrative momentum grind to a halt for a musical number that feels like a leftover from Paint Your Wagon, it’s also a scene filled with such joy and warmth that it’s hard not to become enthralled. The moment when the hall empties save for Averill and Watson, leaving them to dance the night away as if they’re the only two people on the planet, is exactly what cinema is made for.

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Image via United Artists

'Heaven's Gate' Subverts Expectations of the Western Genre

But Heaven’s Gate subverts the genre not just in form, but in theme too. This is a deeply cynical film, openly mocking the notion of the great American project that previous westerns spent their whole runtime praising. The film opens with a flashback to a Harvard graduation ceremony populated with enough pomp and entitlement to make a royal coronation seem subdued, an occasion made worse by their derisive attitude towards their professor after he tells them to bestow their knowledge onto those less fortunate. Twenty years later, these are the same people who feel their glorious nation is being threatened by immigrants searching for the same idyllic life they’ve been lucky enough to live, their ignorance of the struggles these immigrants face coming through with every line of callous dialogue. The conflict between them and the settlers allows Cimino to turn Heaven’s Gate into a wider commentary on America and how such immoral acts of violence and hatred are embedded into its national identity. The mythological idea of America that the barons and the settlers idolize is a lie, and the bitterness with which Cimino treats his home country no doubt contributed to its critical drubbing (not helped by the renewed sense of nationalistic pride after the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan just a few weeks before its premiere). But what better genre is there to critique America than the most atypical American genre there is, and the universality of its themes means they have lost none of their impact.

But Cimino does not tell his story through words alone. Instead, he weaponizes the camera to turn Heaven’s Gate into a visual masterpiece, alternating between shots of serene beauty and grotesque ugliness depending on the scenario. The choice to film in the picturesque Glacier National Park was Cimino’s best creative decision, resulting in landscape shots of such staggering grandeur you’d swear every tree and blade of grass was placed by a painter crafting their magnum opus. It’s like an Albert Bierstadt painting coming to life, and when combined with the use of soft focus to give a dreamlike quality to every frame, it creates a version of America that seems almost too perfect to believe. But that’s the point, and it’s no coincidence that these impressionist images are dripping with the blood from those who believed in this fanciful dream by the story’s conclusion. This is cinematography that has you feeling nostalgic for the good old days one minute and then feeling disgusted at the violence it was built upon the next, seamlessly tying into the film’s overarching thesis. Cimino’s demand for dozens of takes – only after spending hours delicately arranging every extra based on their look and height, mind you – may have infuriated his cast and crew (production was five days behind schedule after only six days of shooting), but the results are frequently stunning.

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Image Via United Artists

A Brutal Final Act

Heaven’s Gate will test the patience of most viewers, but those who stick around will witness a phenomenal final act. The climactic battle between the Association and Johnson County is one of the best in the genre – a bloody and visceral engagement that isn’t afraid to kill off major characters at the drop of a hat. Early success by the settlers means the Association spends the entire battle trapped around a single tree in the middle of an otherwise empty field, creating an interesting dynamic where the side with superior resources is also at a permanent disadvantage. It also gives a believable reason why a group of deprived farmers can best some of America’s finest gunslingers, and their use of Roman-style barricades constructed out of logs means the overall battle favors tactics over senseless action. It’s a brutal fight, scored only by the deafening roar of gunfight and explosions and screams from the dying, but the settlers pull off the impossible and defeat their enemy.

Except, not really. Their victory is cut short by reinforcements for the Association, and with the settlers having expended all their resources on the initial fight, the deaths of those 125 unfortunate people are now inevitable. Cimino doesn’t resort to tired clichés like Averill pulling out one last surprise to annihilate his bewildered foes – instead, Averill just collapses into the dirt, heartbroken at the bloodshed that was all for nothing. It’s a brave decision to end things on such a dour note, with the evil racists we’ve spent the whole film waiting to meet the sorry end of a revolver emerging on top. But these are also evil racists backed by the president, and as a commentary on America being built on the graves of such genocides, it makes for a haunting closer.

Heaven’s Gate is not perfect. The runtime is excessively long (Cimino being the precursor to Quentin Tarantino and dragging out every scene to its breaking point) and the plotline about the Association seems to fall by the wayside for much of the first half to focus on the romance between our three leads, and this isn’t even mentioning his behind the camera behavior that illustrated all the faults of New Hollywood. And yet, despite the film being such a cautionary tale about blindly longing for the past, watching it really does show that they just don’t make them like they used to. To see a film of such ambition, where every creative decision is the result of one singular mind, is a rare sight. That Cimino paired this with an unflinching critique of America that remains unsettlingly relevant four decades on makes it well deserving of another look. Even its flaws make for riveting discussion, and how many films can say that? Heaven’s Gate highlighted the problem with unlimited creative freedom, but in principle, it is the sort of film that studios should be more willing to make, and it deserves far better than being considered a candidate for the worst film ever made.