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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - Gates of Heaven
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $17.99
Your Save: $ 1.99 ( 10% )
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Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Scottie Harberts, Florence Rasmussen, Floyd McClure, Ed Quye, Mike Koewler
Directed By: Errol Morris
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
EAN: 0027616902313
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-07-26
Running Time: 83
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1978
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Editorial Reviews:
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From Academy Award®-winning* director Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) comes this acclaimed film about success and failure in the grave business of animal interment. "Memorable, moving and poignant" (Channel 4 Film), Gates of Heaven is "so rich and thought-provoking it stays in your mind for tantalizing days" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). When financial hardship forces California's Foothill Pet Cemetery to close its pearly gates, its dearly departedloved ones are relocated to the nearby Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park. During this tense transition, filmmaker Morris meets a collection of eccentric cemetery operators and anguished animal-lovers and elicits a meditation on love and loneliness that's "strange, chilling [and] appallingly funny" (Newsweek). *2003: Documentary Feature, Fog of War (with Michael Williams)
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Interesting
Comment: The film has a perverse quality, as if watching someone slowly die, and trying to empathize with it. In that sense, the two films that most closely mirror it are fictive films- Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small and Tod Browning's Freaks. One might also put it in league with the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest were it not played, or shot, straight. In fact, this is the film that Werner Herzog ate his shoe over. Morris had no money to finance the film and Herzog told him to do it anyway, and promised Morris that if he made a film, Herzog eat a shoe at the premiere, ala Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. The act was subsequently made into the short subject film, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
The film's premise is that there are people who will pay thousands of dollars to bury their pets like humans. Ok, I'm a pet lover- a cat lover, but I've never done so. I've never viscerally understood why we bury humans. A corpse is a corpse is a corpse. As long as it is disposed of cleanly, who cares? Yet the film starts off with a disabled old man, Floyd McClure, who tried to start a pet cemetery south of San Francisco, the Foothill Pet Cemetery in Los Altos, because he was haunted by the memories and smells of an animal rendering plant he visited as a youth, as well as the death of his collie as a boy, when it was run over by a car. Manifestly lacking any business sense, the man soon lost his business- as well as did several other investors (one schlemiel lost thirty grand in 1970s cash!), and the animals- four hundred and fifty pets, had to be exhumed and moved to another better pet cemetery, the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park, in Napa Valley- which has designer plots, run by a family of even weirder folk, if possible....The weirdest and most hypnotic person onscreen is an old lady who sits in her home's doorway, and divides the film's halves between McClure and the Harbertses. She is Florence Rasmussen- the poster girl for human strangeness, and she distractedly and digressively paints her tale of woe, and her no good grandson- whom she's going to get money back from, and his whorish ex-wife, whom she calls a `tramp.' What this has to do with dead pets is anyone's guess, although she ends her soliloquy by lamenting the loss of a black kitten and suspecting that a kitty serial killer is on the prowl. She is sort of the addle-brained female equivalent of what Danny Harberts will likely end up as. Yet, despite all that, there is a genuine movement of emotion that the film conjures; as well as some truths- even if as trite as the quote which ends the last paragraph.
Perhaps the greatest emotion conveyed is when dumb old Floyd McClure says, `When I turn my back, I don't know you, not truly. But I can turn my back on my little dog, and I know that he's not going to jump on me or bite me; but human beings can't be that way.' And this is why the film is worth watching. It is not even remotely a great film, but it is an interesting document, something that, like a truly great film, such as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, could be sent on a spaceship for aliens to find in a million years, and tell something of what a real human was. The fact that such qualitatively disparate examples of an art form can reach the same level of inner....dare I say it?, truth, is one of those grand ineffables that makes art worth indulging, sort of like the last shot of Gates Of Heaven, of the Harberts' growing dream cemetery at dusk. On and on it just is. Then, like life and dream, it all ends. So, too, humanity. Alack?
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's not only about a pet cemetary...
Comment: It's not only about a pet cemetery -- It's really about you and me and there's even a minor exposé about ex-Salt Lake Citizens - Partially clad and partial return missionaries; see [...].
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very disapointing
Comment: I have great admiration for Roger Ebert, and almost always agree with his film criticism, but when he called Gates of Heaven one of the top ten films of all time, he was completely wrong. I bought this DVD because of Ebert's recomendation and after viewing it, I realized that I had wasted 20 bucks. I could have bought Bergman's Persona but bought this instead. I can't possibly imagine why so many intelligent people love this boring and seemingly pointless film. It was hard to sit through this one without falling asleep. Please don't waste your money on this DVD!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Strange, Sad, Hilarious & Profound
Comment: This unique film represents not only the beginning of Earl Morris' career, but the finest look at the American obsession with the treatment and care of our pets.
The format is simple; we are introduced to a man whose dream of a pet cemetery has failed. The remains of those animals were sent to another pet cemetery that is flourishing. In between, we meet the owners of both cemeteries and some of the pet owners and hear stories on a variety of subjects. It's hard to categorize this documentary as a comedy or drama since the tone is so straightforward. But that allows "Gates of Heaven" to soar above such conventions and reach a level few films ever have.
Some of the interviews are quite funny and I think all of us can relate to a scene early in the film when an elderly lady is holding her dog near her face and asking him to sing. Another very bizarre image is the sight of a man player his electric guitar at full blast overlooking the pet cemetery.
I was particularly moved by the stories of the two sons of the successful pet cemetery owner. The younger one seems quite lonely living all by himself, yet he seems content while his older brother is in quite a conundrum. Having failed in previous businesses and now behind his sibling at the cemetery, he's still proud of the "positive mental approach" he's been taught over the years.
The most stunning moment happens midway through the film when another elderly lady sits in her doorway and relates the story of her deceased pet. She quickly shifts to describe her no good son and tells that story in a way that is so natural, yet using words and phrases that Mark Twain would probably admire and be in awe of.
The presentation of the movie is full screen, not widescreen. But given how the movie was shot and the type of film used, the viewer is not missing much on the edges. I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of extras, such as no interview with Earl Morris. Or even a text background on the making of "Gates of Heaven" which would give some enlightenment to the journey the filmmaker took in making this masterpiece.
No doubt there will be a expanded or "Ultimate" edition DVD released that will include such extras. But for now we have this version and that will do.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Doggone
Comment: I love animals. I like documentaries. I respect Mr Ebert. Thus I bought Gates of Heaven when I saw it on his "10 BEST" list. Reading all the glowing reviews here, calling this "one of the best American movies ever", "breaking down and crying afterwards" etc, I suppose I am shallow, as I thought this was a boring, D-A-T-E-D, incoherent, S-L-O-W mishmash dotted here and there with some colourful characters and poignant images. I say "dated" because what seemed "wacky" and "bizarre" to people then, now feels like a bad mockumentry. I'd rather watch "BEST IN SHOW" , thank you very much. Just to put my view into perspective - I was deeply moved by the "UP series" (7-UP, etc), also on Mr Ebert's "10 BEST" list. I absolutely agree with his assessment and thank him for introducing me to those films. THIS one is at times charming, but on the whole very disappointing.
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