Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

So over on Facebook a friend posts an article from the New York Times suggesting time has been kind to Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.  Cimino has gotten his own Final Cut, and is showing off his newly-restored four hour version in Venice.  The Times suggests he may also have gotten the last laugh.

Haven’t we heard this all before?  Go and Google “Heaven’s Gate” and “masterpiece” and you’ll get over 87,000 hits, with some critic or newspaper or other proclaiming the film was unjustly neglected.  None of this is new.  Here’s The Guardian in 2005:

Had Heaven’s Gate been directed by Bertolucci or Visconti, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece.

I may well suffer through the four hour version but I suspect I won’t change my mind.  I sat through it before, at the New York opening and, along with the rest of the audience, ended up highly perplexed.  To me, seeing it on opening night, with high expectations but zero preconceptions, was in interesting experience.  As I wrote at 2Blowhards a number of years ago:

Some years back, I was fortunate for a time to have a film critic as a friend and was therefore able to get into some opening night, and pre-opening night, screenings in New York. These were really interesting because they let you approach the film with virtually no preconceptions.

Obviously there was “buzz” to contend with, but at least you didn’t go in with the plot memorized and with a mental crib sheet firmly in place as to what the major reviewers thought. Also, these events gave you an unvarnished look at how the attendees themselves reacted. . .

It was a fascinating experience. I came to the film expecting the best, having fallen head over heels for The Deer Hunter . . .

I recall the intermission, at which the champagne flowed freely, to be extraordinary sociology: all these semi-bigwigs walking around not knowing whether to trust the “buzz” or their own instincts (as the old saying goes “who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”). And to tell the truth, I found myself having the same ambivalent reaction myself–“hmmm, Christopher Walken wearing a ton of makeup in the old West, maybe this is somehow . . . significant????”

So do you plan to see the final final final cut when available?