Heaven's Gate

I'd had this monumental turkey saved up for ages and finally watched it at the tail-end of my cinemania week. Just how did something so unaccomplished get to be made? It has a reputation for having brought United Artists to its knees. That version of studio history is something of an urban myth but it does make a fitting epitaph for a movie which manifestly got completely out of control. And yet. And yet. There is a kernel of an epic here, lost beyond resurrection thanks to a shameless outbreak of directorial self-indulgence. Somebody had evidently told Michael Cimino that The Deer Hunter was the great American film (it wasn't) and then given him licence to make the even greater American film, the western to cap all westerns. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What we get is a stupefying and  uncontrolled mess. Following the example of The Deer Hunter we have a lengthy establishing coda which bears no narrative relation we can discern to the main plot. John Hurt is a major figure in this opening and this we can tell is somehow 'significant', except that Hurt then disappears from any meaningful participation  bar a couple of unworthy drunk scenes.

It gets worse. Shots are lovingly composed so that you can't see what is going on. The sound goes to Altmanesque extremes to make dialogue inaudible, but Altman's ability to carry it off is missing in action. Having got himself a classical French actress Cimino decides that what he should do with Isabelle Huppert is have her strip off as regularly as possible. But,but,but,but,but it is watchable, like some magnificent slow motion train crash. The possibilities of cinema are all there but none is actually deployed.