Heavens Gate is one of the most notorious cinematic bombs of all time. A 1980 Western about an armed conflict in Wyoming between rich cattlemen and poor farmers, made for a then-astronomical $44 million, it not only destroyed the career of director Michael Cimino (a rising star on the strength of The Deer Hunter) this marathon-length epic basically put studio United Artists out of business and ended the auteur-driven 70s golden age of Hollywood. Now director Steven Soderbergh has decided to fix it.
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The film was originally released with a running time of over three and a half hours (219 minutes, to be exact); since then, its been re-edited by various people, including Cimino himself, at various lengths. But last week, director Steven Soderbergh released Heavens Gate: The Butchers Cut on his own website (which also includes T-shirts and Polaroids for sale, plus year-by-year lists of every movie, TV show, book, and play hes consumed).
Soderberghs explanatory note (credited to Mary Ann Bernard, the pseudonym he uses when hes editing) says, As a dedicated cinema fan, I was obsessed with Heavens Gate from the moment it was announced in early 1979unfortunately, history has show[n] that on occasion a fan can become so obsessed they turn violent toward the object of their obsession, which is what happened to me during the holiday break of 2006. This is the result.
The Butchers Cut slices out more than half of Ciminos original version, and if the result isnt a masterpiece, the 108-minute cut makes a case for parts ofHeavens Gate being a forgotten gem. Aside from moving faster throughout, this version truncates the ending (removing the final ambush on Ella and the epilogue on the yacht) and moves the prologue (at Harvards 1870 graduation) to the end, rendering it more poignant when we know of all the bloodshed that will follow it.
Soderbergh is unafraid to retain languorous sequences of scene-setting, including an odd but memorable musical number at a roller rink. But what stands out in this shorter version are some memorable performances, including Kris Kristofferson as a principled lawman, Jeff Bridges as the roller-rink owner, and especially, a shockingly young Christopher Walken as an enforcer with divided loyalties and unusual line readings.
Soderberghs final word? The title card that reads I acknowledge that what I have done with this film is both immoral and illegal.