CREEMEDIA
There are no stories anymore, only isolated moments. Someone tells me this narrative breakdown started with Stendhal, which may or may not be pertinent. It is true that many—most—of the very best American movies of the 1970’s, by Altman, Allen, DePalma, Malick, Scorsese, etc. are less fully realized tales than frameworks for whatever special virtuosity the director and his actors want to exhibit.
CREEMEDIA
Mitchell Cohen
Heaven’s Ball?
RAGING BULL
Directed by Martin Scorsese
HEAVEN’S GATE
Directed by Michael Cimino_
There are no stories anymore, only isolated moments. Someone tells me this narrative breakdown started with Stendhal, which may or may not be pertinent. It is true that many—most—of the very best American movies of the 1970’s, by Altman, Allen, DePalma, Malick, Scorsese, etc. are less fully realized tales than frameworks for whatever special virtuosity the director and his actors want to exhibit.
Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is satisfyingly kinetic pulp, and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate is sluggish pictorialism, but neither can be described as the epitome of coherence. The fact that ‘'Heavensgate” will enter the lexicon as an epithet that means to the movie industry what “Watergate” does to politics seems an outrageous overreaction, while the undeniable energy that jumps off the screen from Raging Bull is more frenetic than focused.