Michael501 📺’s review published on Letterboxd:
1980 In Review - November
Harvard graduate James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) is the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, when a battle erupts between the area's poverty-stricken immigrants and its wealthy cattle farmers. The politically connected ranch owners fight the immigrants with the help of Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken), a mercenary competing with Averill for the love of local madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). As the struggle escalates, Averill and Champion begin to question their decisions.
And so I finally get to Heavens Gate, infamously the film that bankrupted United Artists, grossing back only $3.5 from its $44 million budget. Ebert claimed it was one of the ugliest films he had ever seen. Always pointed as being one of the worst films ever made. But was it really all that bad??
Well, the problem here for me is the pace, it’s just too slow, it makes an ice age seem speedy by comparison. Every scene just doesn’t know when to end, it was as though there was no editor or an editor who didn’t want to cut anything down. Scenes just go on and on, sometimes with no purpose. I argue that you could easily lose the first hour or and so and not feel any difference. The first scene set in Harvard has no real purpose to the rest of the film, although it is beautifully shot, doesn’t add anything. Most of the film is like this.
As for Ebert calling this the ugliest film he has ever seen I don’t agree with, some of the scenery is gorgeous and you can definitely see all the budget up on the screen. It does look good and everything looked authentic to the time. I just think it’s a badly directed film, in a lot of scenes it’s hard to work out who is who, and what is going on, the action scenes at the end of the film are terrible too.
I think there is a decent enough film in here somewhere, but you need to have the patience of a saint to sit through it