Movie · 1980 · Drama, Western, History · 3h 37m · R · English
Curator score: 5.6/10 (44.1K ratings)
What one loves about life are the things that fade.
Overview
Harvard graduate James Averill serves as the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, standing at the center of a conflict between impoverished immigrants and affluent cattle farmers. Politically connected ranchers enlist mercenary Nathan Champion—who is also vying for the affections of local madam Ella Watson—to combat the immigrant uprising. As tensions escalate, both Averill and Champion start to question their decisions.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.6/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.78/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 57%
Metacritic: 57
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Michael Cimino
Production
United Artists, Partisan Productions
Cast
Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Joseph Cotten, Jeff Bridges, Ronnie Hawkins, Paul Koslo, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Rosie Vela, Mary Catherine Wright, Nicholas Woodeson, Stefan Shcherby, Waldemar Kalinowski, Terry O'Quinn, Jack Conley, Margaret Benczk
Where to watch
fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo
Curator Review
Verdict
A sprawling, visually ravishing Western epic that turns a range war into a bleak study of class power, immigration, and American mythmaking. It is famously overlong and uneven, but the scale, atmosphere, and historical bitterness make it a major watch for viewers who like ambitious, uncompromising cinema.
Best for
epic historical dramas
revisionist Westerns
slow-burn prestige cinema
films about class conflict and American violence
viewers who appreciate lavish visual composition
Skip if
you want a tight, fast-moving Western
you dislike long runtimes and deliberate pacing
you prefer cleanly structured plots
you are impatient with tonal heaviness and moral bleakness
Overview
Heaven’s Gate is one of cinema’s great cautionary tales about ambition, but the movie itself is far more interesting than the legend around it. Cimino stages the frontier as a place where wealth, ethnicity, and political influence decide who gets to survive, and he does it with an almost obsessive eye for texture, landscape, and ritual. The result is less a conventional Western than a funeral march for the American dream.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the film’s sense of scale: the crowds, the dust, the music, the choreography of bodies in space. Even when the movie strains under its own weight, it keeps producing images that feel monumental and strangely intimate at once. Its romantic triangle and political conflict are folded into a broader, harsher vision of history as organized violence.
Bottom line
It is not an easy recommendation for everyone. The pacing is patient to the point of provocation, and some scenes feel indulgent rather than cumulative. But for viewers open to an epic that is both beautiful and bitter, Heaven’s Gate remains a singular work of American cinema.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Logan Kenny (5★) · 753 likes
a nation built on death, acts of genocide, corruption, capital and bitter hatred. the executions may differ but the principles remain the same, nothing really changes, the americana still remains and the poor are still being murdered, their corpses left on the battlefield to rot. god bless the United States right? this is one of the greatest films ever made.
Filipe Furtado · 494 likes
Heaven’s Gate remains as great and absorbing a historical panorama as ever. The high point of Cimino’s generation often misguided Visconti love. For once the bloat is put to good use and is filled with genuine regret. Like earlier Welles this is a young man’s old man film. A cinematic monument no matter what naysayers say.
Ziglet_mir (5★) · 439 likes
I was eleven years old when I first laid eyes upon the lone fiddler on roller skates that corralled the onlooking-people to the sepia-toned roller rink. Then the rich folksy, blue-grass rhythms joined hands with the golden dust that bounced off the wooden floorboards. It was an infectious, utterly hypnotic moment for me. I remember finding a seat next to my grandfather (on his couch that would engulf any human within its infinite leather folds) and feeling the warmth come… more I was eleven years old when I first laid eyes upon the lone fiddler on roller skates that corralled the onlooking-people to the sepia-toned roller rink. Then the rich folksy, blue-grass rhythms joined hands with the golden dust that bounced off the wooden floorboards. It was an infectious, utterly hypnotic moment for me. I remember finding a seat next to my grandfather (on his couch that would engulf any human within its infinite leather folds) and feeling the warmth come… more
Jake Cole (5★) · 370 likes
"Whole damn country'll be nothing but widows and orphans soon."
We spend nearly a half-hour watching a Harvard graduation that stresses up and down the entitlement of the upper crust and their absurd fabrications of rituals design to create a false sense of shared cultural identity to stand in for their actual common denominator of wealth. A professor extols the departing seniors on the importance of their cultivated minds confronting and enlightening the ignorant, and when things cut forward to… more
Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 (4★) · 303 likes
Matthew Ekstrom's #5 Film Selection for Edgar
Michael Cimino's disgustingly ambitious epic:
- Has Kris Kristofferson.- Has Christopher Walken- Has John Hurt- Has Jeff Bridges- Has Brad Dourif- Has Mickey Rourke- Has Isabelle Huppert in all her female glory... for the hundredth time- Runs for 219 minutes- Has an intermission- Is notorious for being an infamous financial disaster- Costed $36,000,000.00 in 1980's terms- Initially left United Artists financially crippled… more