>>>>Six is a nice number too.
>>>
>>>It's a brave man who admits liking "Heaven's Gate." It's on any list of Hollywood disasters.
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>>I am somewhat prone to think that the disaster was a revenge. After telling the ugly truth about Vietnam in the Deer hunter, Cimino thought that he can go deeper in the past and tell some more of ugly truth - the initial accumulation of capital is crime over crime over crime, including well organized slaughter. Only when they have plundered enough, they start making legal, and property becomes sacrosanct. The property they robbed beforehand is now legally theirs.
>>
>>And it was the time, the last echo of the sixties, when Hollywood had to allow authors some liberty, because the authors were making money. Hollywood was eager to go back to the true and tried cookie cutter and the proper order of things, where producers, lawyers and bankrollers have a final say on what goes and what not. Cimino was chosen as a scapegoat, an example of why letting directors make (decisions about their) movies is wrong. They don't like art, they like industry. Read the first critiques again - they mostly deal with the cost vs lack of popcorn inducing parts, i.e. they complain it's not a commercial movie, and that it's a director's indulgence. The intention to show that author's movie and then one that doesn't have the standard set of [s]features[/s] cliches (brawls, chases, explosions, shootings, guards being shot and not counted) is doomed to fail - and thus set the stage for the critiques to follow. Anyone trying to write against this stream saw the [s]writing on the wall[/s] graffiti and felt left out of the new mainstream... or joined the stream.
>>
>>So the movie was doomed not on its merits, but on the times that were changing (for the worse, IMO).
>
>The only thing wrong with your theory, other than leaving out that Cimino was an egomaniac after success, is "The Deer Hunter" was not about Vietnam. The heart of the movie is the early part, the buddies back home in Pennsylvania. "One shot," the DeNiro character says. That is his code. The raucous wedding reception is as good as anything on celluloid. It's also a pleasure to watch Meryl Streep when she was young. She has not tried to disguise the passing years -- and a tip of the hat for that -- but she was stunningly beautiful when she was young.

While I agree that the heart is entirely dependent on the early part, it is also about the emotional, moral, mental, and physical effects of a politically motivated war and the impact of their experiences on their lives. How it affected their friendships, loyalties, and families. What the stress of war (suicide, mental illness, PTSD, etc) do to their friendships, their families, and themselves.

Do you remember the scene with the Green Beret at the wedding reception (was it a reception or a bachelor party?)...

Also the russian roulette scene was highly controversial at the time. I'm partly with Dragan on this, however his theory is wrong because there are too many controversial documentaries and films still being done. Look at No Way Home, The Last Temptation of Christ, JFK, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Passion of the Christ...