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Heaven's Gate (1980)
Lost Greatness
'Heaven's Gate' is not a masterpiece, which apparently was what it needed to be upon first release to justify its great cost, and, more importantly, the continued uneasy reliance of Hollywood on the Auteur model of film-making. Yet 'Heaven's Gate', seen today at last on DVD in a cut of 229 minutes, is a superb film. It is a touch lethargic in pace. But at least it is paced. Quite apart from the incompetence of construction that marks many films today, there have been many films which, deliberate in form, have been severely damaged by being hacked down with no care for rhythm so the films become shapeless and confusing. Beyond this, the criticisms leveled at the film have become in retrospect quite lame. If the good guys and bad guys are too obviously pronounced for a serious film, and yes Sam Waterston's mustachioed, fur-clad villain is comic-opera (and not in the multi-leveled manner of Bill The Butcher from 'Gangs of New York'), and yes, the townsfolk do seem a touch 'Fiddler On The Roof' on occasions, then a few dozen serious films made since then, including 'Titanic' and the graceless 'Cold Mountain' (which bears certain similarities and is a notable failure in convincing qualities compared to this film) can be castigated for exactly the same reason.
Also despite accusations, the film has a plot, quite a well-essayed plot at that. It simply does not bow to standard-form 'epic' quality, by providing Titan heroes, rafts of sub-plots and confusion. It experiments with telling in a manner more like much smaller, modest films, by carefully-caught moments of character interaction, and well-textured pageant-like explosions of communal action, as with the opening at Harvard and, most specially, the wonderful scene where the Johnson County folk, following the lead of a brilliantly physical fiddler, make celebration on roller-skates.
'The Deer Hunter' was a critical and commercial success but abandoned the first half's inspired, mosaic-like accumulation of detail, and I think in a manner similar to criticism of Robert Penn Warren's novel 'All The King's Men' and its dictionary of Jacobean stunts, if Cimino had not had such a strong grasp of the conventions of Hollywood epics, he might have made a special rare work of art based in honest visualisation of people within their milieu. In contrast, 'Heaven's Gate' succeeds in screwing its narrative momentum and tension upwards in a slowly expanding arc, until the finale explodes, whilst not abandoning the mosaic approach.
The central romantic triangle, for instance, resists standard inflections; a decent, intelligent, but psychically defeated man, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) competes with a hot-shot but identity-challenged young gunman Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) for the hand of a young Madame, Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert); there is no self-conscious bed-hopping, no slaps in the face, recriminations, or typical sad-sack moments, but more a sad and distanced decision by Ella to choose the younger man whom she loves less because he is ready to make the commitment. Ella emerges as the film's true hero (Huppert's performance, though initially awkward, is really quite excellent, balancing a dewy emotionalism with a hard-hammered spirit), attempting first to rescue Nate and then mustering the resistance party of immigrants into an enterprising defence. Subsequently, Averill is stung into action as friends die. Indeed, in the process of overcoming so many traps of cliché and style, 'Heaven's Gate' successfully and willfully throws off the defeated outsider-heroes grace note of so many '70s Westerns and portrays an eventual, vigorous, cheer-the-heroes rallying to a compromised but still relished victory.
The social conflict of so many '70s Westerns at last hardens into a fully-fledged war; where capital attempts a crushing final victory over the miscreants who stand in their way, suddenly they find a massed and more-powerful people's army, led by the man who played the thoroughly-destroyed Billy the Kid a decade before. This is what led the film to be described as the first Marxist Western, but really it simply deflowers a theme of the genre extant well before the '60s. Such various and classic old-school works as William Wyler's 'The Westerner', and even 'Shane', tell awfully similar stories. It is simply here that the romantic myth of the gunslinger has been replaced by the romantic myth of the people's revolt. In a spectacular, exiting, but realistic and thus chaotic finale, the marauding Cattlemen's encampment is attacked, ringed by dust clouds punctuated by fallen horses, writhing bodies, and gunfire. Averill puts his classical education to work finally by stealing a Roman trick and bringing the Cattlemen to the brink of annihilation before they are rescued by the Cavalry (another distinctly seditious touch, but surely not so offensive after 'Little Big Man's unrelenting depiction of Native American massacres). Really, it's hard to think of a more heroically American vision of grassroots resistance. The film's only real dead spot stands as an unnecessary coda indicating Averill's eventual relapse, a rather potted piece of tragedy.
Despite then certain failings and a slow mid-section, 'Heaven's Gate' is a supreme piece of work, a genuine attempt to create a contemporary Western and a new kind of epic. If one has to still join the chorus that reckons Cimino was absurd in his behaviour on set and expenditure, it is regretfully. When, today, flops like 'The Adventures of Pluto Nash' and 'K-19 - The Widowmaker' see nearly a hundred million dollars sink down the drain, and yet a tag of infamy still hangs on this film, one ponders what exactly its grim death signified. The attempt at original style, the bawdy sexuality, the very hard-won sense of detail, the breathtaking rigor of the film-making and what is being filmed, all throw into contrast what is sorely lacking in so much contemporary Hollywood product.
Van Helsing (2004)
Stop Sommers Before He Kills Again!
As a fan of 1) good horror films, 2) Bram Stoker's novel, 3) Murnau, Browning, and Terence Fisher's 'Dracula' takes, 4) Peter Cushing; and having detested Stephen Sommers' 'Mummy' films, and having read all the reviews, I was not exactly in a great hurry to see this film. But I was willing put my purist's taste in the closet, along with my critical faculties, all my higher brain functions in fact, and just take this as zippy moving wallpaper, and finally renting it on the cheap on DVD, I found that even my spectacularly low expectations were not only stooped to but surpassed by this woefully empty exercise in CGI doodling off. The 3-page script I would reckon to have been packed together by a bunch of excitable pre-teens riffing on their favorite Horror and Adventure flicks, but I suspect such kids would have provided more solid characterization and plotting than this thing provides. Firstly Mr Sommers et al toss out everything that was interesting and meaningful about the Van Helsing character and the Dracula legend and fill in the gaps with a lot of agony aunt superhero stuff and a few good ideas (the secret Vatican anti-monster force, the warrior Gypsy clan) that are of no interest whatsoever to them, as they are only interested in layering on effects and stunts, the cumulative effect of which is incredibly boring. Making the heroes nearly as indestructible as the villains - as in the bit where Kate Beckinsale falls about four stories down through a tree's branches and lands with nary a scratch - really helps to make you care and believe in them.
As with many modern movies, it is magnificently shot and dazzlingly designed, but provides no sensual pleasure whatsoever in its technical wizardry. Hugh Jackman does the intense superhero bit surprisingly well and all he requires is a script with lines of dialogue that make sense. Richard Roxburgh I wish would stop playing villains, for here as in 'Moulin Rouge' he goes right off the deep end with a stupidly campy performance. Beckinsale lacks steel, humor, and anything resembling sex appeal; I've followed her career since 'Cold Comfort Farm' and she gets duller by the passing year. David Wenham, the most talented of the three Aussies wasting themselves here, manages to make a couple of lines work with a good comic act. Compare this film to the genius of Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow' (from which it steals a steroid-pumped version of the coach chase) which combined old and modern movie tropes so cleverly. At the point when I checked how much of it I had sat through - 81 minutes - and realized it still had something like 40-50 minutes to go, it was high time for the eject button. Abominable.
Troy (2004)
Myth and Reality
(Multiple SPOILERS)
There's an essential tragedy enacted when Hector and Achilles meet in this film. Each is brave, honorable man, who in a different circumstance ought to be brothers in spirit. But, as Hector fights for his home and kin and Achilles fights for dead Patroclus and to make himself the very definition of the warrior ethic, each is dedicated utterly to the destruction of the other. Their greatness makes them blind. This scene lifts 'Troy' from being a very ordinary, po-faced recounting of a legend and pumps blood into veins. The following scene, with Peter O'Toole's marvelous take on Priam's grieved request, cements this and the film drives to an appropriately apocalyptic finish.
Many will say 'Troy' is a great film and even more will call it a terrible film; it is neither. It is a sturdy Hollywood epic studded with moments both excellent and lackluster. Critics have delighted in suggesting it's a campy throwback to 50s kitsch of 'The Robe' and its ilk, but this is not true; actually, it's too damned low key and phony arty. A bit more trash would have helped. Coming to it after just reading 'The Iliad' is not kind. Ah ha, you say, but why should it compete with some high-falutin' bit of Grecian poetry when it's supposed to be a good night at the movies? Well, firstly, 'The Iliad' is as vital and solid a piece of writing as any in existence, and it's got more action than any 'Die Hard' flick. Homer could turn a story on a dime and make the confrontation of two men not encountered before in the story of sudden deadly interest. It swings from ugly thrilling slaughter to poetic beauty to tear-jerking sentiment to high farce within pages. In short, it's like all the life of the Greeks and the Trojans have been stuffed onto the page. 'Troy', stripped-down, dourly real, is at no time such a rich and involving, multi-leveled work. Hector and Achilles' solitary confrontation on a vast plain reminded me of the finale of Sergio Leone's 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly', and then the real problem struck me. Leone's films with their operatic style, loopy humor and mythical heroes, are far more Homeric than this film which proceeds academically, even dully, for its first half.
Perhaps its worst crime is to rob its characters of the awe that has made them memorable for 3,000 years, that fame the film reminds us so frequently they are trying to earn. Ajax (only the Larger: Ajax the Runner is left out) is reduced to a big guy swinging a club; both he and Menelaus are killed within minutes of each-other by Hector. Patroclus is supposed to be nearly as brilliant and experienced a soldier as Achilles, where here he's a whelp scarcely out of Myrmidon Junior High. The emphasis on Achilles here helps to dull the others, although David Benioff's unwieldy script doesn't help. Agamemnon's part is also frustrating, and tied in to the film's irritating insistence on projecting Hollywood-type morality. This is tale of ancient times with very different standards, some obnoxious to modern taste. Agamemnon in the legends is no saint, but in this era, the warrior leader puts his money where his mouth is; he fights mightily. The emotional Agamemnon had to sacrifice a daughter to get this war moving. At no time in the film is this portrayed. Brian Cox's Agamemnon is simply a ranting, power-mad dictator. In 'The Iliad' though the Greeks are aggressors, they make us admire them for brave and brilliant. Apart from Achilles and Odysseus, I strongly suspect most audiences watching will wonder why they should care for the Greeks. Whilst this is no Manichean battle as in the 'The Lord of the Rings' films, we are clearly reduced to good guys and bad guys.
Iin 'The Iliad', there is both great tragedy and glory in these two armies mauling each-other, rather lost in this version as the Greeks are reduced to Agamemnon's conquering Panzercorps and the Trojans to besieged ranchers. Troy has proved rich ground for interpretation, from Shakespeare's cynical 'Troilus and Cressida' to cardboard sword and sandal epics. So we have a 'Troy' for the post-9/11 era; lines of loyalty, good, and bad, are terminally blurred; idealism is manipulated by conquerors into a smokescreen of self-righteousness; slaughter gains a snowballing momentum until all have to look upon their basest natures. This is a intelligent take but it's not fulfilled; Barry Unsworth's recent novel 'The Songs of Kings' took many of the same ideas and plays them much more competently; the soldiers' desire for immortality in art, and the excuse of Helen for pillage, conquest, and political success; and the possibility that out of their self-mythologizing and violence will indeed emerge a noble future of Hellenic solidarity and glorious myth. 'Troy' wants to explore these things but still have its classical tragedies and heroes too, and it's an unwieldy combination. It's then neither successful as political metaphor or heroic tale.
Achilles too is changed, to an existential warrior longing both for glory and death. But Benioff has the cheek to turn this into a love story. Where Briseis is simply a minor Homeric pawn setting off Achilles' dispute with Agamemnon, here she's a Trojan royal princess protected by Achilles. Achilles of 'The Iliad' is a perfect soldier as likely to be emotionally involved with a chattel woman as he is to become a wheat farmer in Macedon. This aspect is only added so we accept his killing of family man Hector more easily. In our age which respects strength and bravery much less than purposeful constructiveness and protective impulse, Hector overtakes all the Greeks as the story's tragic hero. Hector's earthy, social sensibility is inevitably beaten because Achilles' relentlessness in war comes from his having nothing to lose. As part-god he is aware of the temporary nature of life - this aspect is well put across but his attachment to Briseis is a shallow distraction. This changes but doesn't kill the tragedy of his and Hector's fight. As Achilles drags Hector behind his chariot, a woman behind muttered 'Oh god!' - the story's primal power came through at last undiminished. There's something anti-climactic about Achilles' death, with his confused, unlikely search for Briseis in the falling Troy. That said, the fall of Troy is good, gut-wrenching sequence.
As film-making, and not myth-making, the film is solid and unspectacular; the CGI armies are rather improved, but it's dull compared to the battles in films like 'Alexander Nevsky' and even Kenneth Branagh's 'Henry V' where it looks like real people are fighting and dying. This is particularly why Hector and Achilles' fight saves it; it's personal and exciting in the way the whole of 'The Iliad' is. Visually it's very ordinary, lacking even the moments of plush decoration that made 'Gladiator' a bit more than a glorified remake of 'Rollerball', except again in the conclusion with a very convincing and dramatic burning city. I doubt this will jump Wolfgang Petersen back to the front rank of film-makers as Ridley Scott managed; 'Troy' is really kind workmanlike, well-told, without confusion, but without risks or inspiration either. That said, where 'Gladiator' fell into a morass of murkiness and bad plotting, 'Troy' lifts as its proceeds, becoming more dense and more passionate. Particularly at the beginning, the acting is stiff; Diane Kruger's Helen is desultory, Orlando Bloom's Paris another breathy pretty boy, Brian Cox all shouts and growls. Eric Bana, a brilliant comic actor, keeps landing parts of humorless gravity. He seems less Homeric here than in 'Black Hawk Down', and struggles not to sound like he's from the Bondi side of Turkey, but to his credit he manages emotional depth and grit. Brad Pitt as Achilles is the most important performer, and the real target, but he's not bad, overcoming like Bana the difficulty of mastering hero-speak and capturing a curiously pained superman; one-note but a sustained note. All of these actors improve as the film continues, but Saffron Burrows and Peter O'Toole make the best impressions, both with tremulous, convincing emotion. What this film leaves you then with is a confused yearning, to have been given more, to have felt more, to have thought more. It should be twice as great as 'The Lord Of The Rings', but it's not half as good a movie.