I may have just watched one of the most controversial, intensely debated and best movies ever made without even knowing it. That is the enigma of Errol Morris, who’s legendary mystique started with this film in 1978, “Gates of Heaven.”
The film is a documentary about a man who starts a pet cemetery, fails, has over 450 pets displaced to yet another cemetery, and then about the people who work there and take their job very seriously.
It is a damned peculiar documentary. It is not a documentary that advocates political or social change or provides a thorough historical document of people’s lives. It tells a story of these people who live in California and does not offer any commentary or internal narration as to what it thinks about them.
The same is true of Morris’s great new film “Tabloid,” in which we can’t quite believe it all to be true, yet Morris never tells what to believe nor give us any reason to doubt any of it. But watching “Tabloid,” there’s no question that watching much of it is intended to be outrageous and shockingly hilarious, even if he does wholeheartedly sympathize with the woman who raped a Mormon (don’t ask).
“Gates of Heaven” is much more subtle. The film’s ironic, sardonic twists are not necessarily intended for comic relief. But Roger Ebert’s Great Movies review of the film, one in which he refers to the time he called “Gates of Heaven” one of the 10 best movies ever made, gives me the sense that I am not alone in this feeling. “The film they made has become an underground legend, a litmus test for audiences, who cannot decide if it is serious or satirical, funny or sad, sympathetic or mocking,” he writes. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Gates of Heaven”