Saturday, June 15, 2013
HALF WAY THROUGH HEAVEN
Today and tomorrow's film are the two halves of Michael Cimino's
This was labeled a disaster by critics when it came out. It never recovered.
It had already been edited down from 3 hours and 40 minutes to less than an hour.
You can't do that without some discontinuity.
I am watching it in two sittings. I have never seen it before. I have not really read the criticism. Roger Ebert's dismissal was absolute. He wrote a one paragraph condemnation citing only incongruities.
This film is a restoration by Criterion. Some pieces have never been seen and were not in good shape.
But it is spellbinding.
Here is what I like about it. The scale. It is immense as Wyoming is immense. The Grand Tetons.
There are hundreds of people in many scenes. The city scenes of Caspar with full blocks of streets are breathtaking. The stink and mess of it all.
Then the wide open spaces. Flowers. Snow. Plains. Mountains. A buggy driving by. Nothing else.
I liked the set pieces. A huge dance in Harvard Yard where some of these guys come from. A roller skating sequence. The squalor of immigrant "housing". A cock fight which is upsetting enough but the people roaring is intense.
I am having trouble finding the story. Isabelle Huppert, young and dewy, a whore, is in this. Kris Kristofferson, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston. Great if a bit over the top acting. Look who it is.
More tomorrow for the second half.
Labels: films
