Gates of Heaven (1978)

Truly Dreadful Film

Memorable, crazy movie

Boring, long, and too preachy.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

I don't know how Errol Morris ever became so respected when he produced garbage like this.This movie jumps from person to person, never making much sense.It's basically just a record of stupid people saying stupid things.The first idiot was a pear shaped loser with the IQ of a pear.The man is 48 years old and doesn't look a day under 100.He said things like "worsh" and "they don't waste nothing" multiple times.His only purpose in the movie is to try to make the guy from the rendering plant(the only guy in the movie with a functioning brain)look evil and he fails consistently.So he mentions being charged with a crime and then they just move on and we never find out what happened to him.The focus then moves on to another mental midget.This guy blames the "pet explosion" on human birth control.He says birth control makes women get jobs and if they don't have a baby they need to get something to "fondle".He goes on to say then the woman's parents need to get pets because the lack of grandchildren leaves them nothing to "fondle" and "rear".With thoughts like that rattling around in his empty head, you know his offspring are going to be real winners.Those fools are the next to grace your screen.They are both college graduates who couldn't function at real jobs.The older one was too stressed out to sell insurance and the other one got dumped by his girlfriend so they both had to move home and let daddy support them.The older son goes on to explain how a graph chart works and how hard it is to drive to vet offices, no wonder insurance was kicking his ass.The other one babbles about music and we are treated to way too much of his terrible guitar playing.At one point he plays a recording of his noise while we are treated to a view of his pot plants.And I didn't even mention all the idiot pet owners.One old lady cries about how she raised her grandson and he doesn't do anything for her.She claims to have bought him a "real nice" car but later admits she only gave him $400.But what would you expect from a person who doesn't even realize they had to raise their grandson because they failed at being a parent the first time?The rest of the pets owners can't shut up about how they will see their pets in heaven and it's just so sad that people can be that stupid.The only reason to watch this is the guy at the rendering plant.

Gates of Heaven (1978) *** (out of 4) Errol Morris broke onto the scene with this strange but touching documentary about the pet cemetery business. Morris starts off talking to a few people who decided to form a business and then we hear the stories about how they got the property and what issues came up. From here we get to hear from many pet owners who decided to bury their loved ones with dignity. GATES OF HEAVEN is one of the most highly rated documentaries to come out with many, including Roger Ebert, considering it one of the greatest films ever made. I certainly wouldn't go that far on either account but I think there's no question that the film has a unique charm that draws you in no matter what your feelings are in regards to people treating pets better than humans. I thought some of the most interesting aspects were early on when we hear from the owner of the cemetery as he discusses what made him decide to do this. It certainly wasn't for the money but instead for just needing a beautiful place to put pets to rest. It's also interesting hearing from the people who actually pay a lot of money to have their pets put into a coffin and given a place to where they can visit them. I thought some of the stories were rather sad as it's clear these pets were the only thing in these people's lives and now they're gone. Some of the stuff with the elderly people were extremely sad. While I found the subject matter to be interesting, I can't say I was completely won over by it. I think at times the people really go off topic on things and just seem to ramble on. I think a few of the interviews could have been edited down and I think it would have made for a better movie. With that said, this is a highly regarded movie so what do I know?

They're not like us entirely, but they're just like us in an essential way: they want to have a good, solid profession (yes, it is as owners and workers at a pet cemetery), and they love(d) their pets. There's an essential part of the doc where a woman talks about the 'spirit' and how when a body dies the spirit must go elsewhere. Although the topic of if there is heaven or hell or any kind of afterlife can be debated till days end, a film like Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris' debut, gives the very clear notion that an animal does have a spirit, because the human being that cares for it has a level of love and compassion and just sheer avoidance of loneliness that a spirit must be present. Life becomes all the greater of importance when loss comes, as a cycle comes for those who have loved and lost, and it's just the same with animals as with people. You don't have to be an eccentric, like some may be (or may not be depending on your definition of eccentric), to know what life is, at the least when it's gone.There's not one person in Morris' bizarrely funny and expertly unobtrusive look at the lives and work of those involved with pet cemeteries who is without some kind of spirit, and in all their slightly strange (the guy who works at the meat processing plant), sort of mockable in the Christopher Guest sense (there's one guy, the ex-insurance agent son of the cemetery worker, who goes by the "Double As and Double Rs" as rules for life and has trophies on his desk when he had job applicants for encouragement), and cheerfully quaint (the old lady who complains about her son, and wishes she could drive) appearances on film, they're very much alive. It's not exactly a satire, though one might think it was an off-key one if it were a mockumentary. 'Gates' is layered in ways that many documentaries try to shy away from, and at the same time Morris has a definite knack for presenting the people objectively- or however much a documentary filmmaker, or any filmmaker, can present them 'as is' in their testimonials- while having a very subtle hand with subjectivity with the camera. It's obvious Morris didn't have much money to make the film (it took Herzog and eating his shoe to help get the film released), but there are little moments of invention, like the spinning newspaper to the headline, or the unflinching angles on the ex-plot-of-land for the dead pets which is now next to a highway, or just simple pans or having one man- the musician son of the Harberts family- listening to the music he's recorded.Morris has lots of things like that going on, but it's really all a series of stories and personal accounts of two sides of pet cemetery workers/owners: the completely heartfelt and crippled Floyd McClure, who due to not getting all the paperwork right, despite having all of the heart he could muster up, lost his pet cemetery and all the animals were dug up. Seeing this gentle man of conscience is one part of Morris's layering, as he's a sincere individual who truly loves the animals he worked to find resting places (and despises the equally passionate, crafty but laughable rendering plant owner), and with a fatal flaw at work that he trusted animals more than people. But then there's the mixed flip side of the Harberts family, who took the dead pets previously buried with McClure, where the patriarch is a consummate professional, his kids either have not much interest in the outside world except their own creativity (the musician), or have accepted their lot in life as a worker for the family (the ex-insurance salesman). These are the kinds of people that one would've not really seen on Six Feet Under, if only because in this case suggestion, from the interviews, says probably more than the deep character analysis of the show.And Morris deftly mixes these two stories with some people who've had their pets buried, or knew people who had their pets buried, at the cemeteries. The woman who says the part about the pet having a spirit is one, but there's also the woman who tries to get her little dog to sing, or the one who talks about the grief she had with the death of her dog, and at the end of her tips to help save one's dog the husband says "neutered." There are close-ups of the words on the grave-sites of the animals that ring this tragic-comic tone of the film ever so much, that there's enough in just having a memory left, of remembrances for these creatures that lived as short as two years and as long as sometimes twenty, for those who were closest to them. Gates of Heaven, while not quite Morris's best film (Fog of War and especially Thin Blue Line are higher up, though not by a lot) is a worthwhile 80 minute observation of the shaky but absolute reasons why that people need pets, and in effect just need each other period.

At first glance, Gates of Heaven appears to be a documentary about the lives of people that run pet cemetaries. On second glance, you realize you are witnessing a visual essay on the subject of death and dying, and how these average folk deal with it.There are esesentially three parts to the film. All deal with either the struggle to build a pet cemetery or maintaining a pet cemetery. The most interesting segment is with a family who runs a successful cemetery in the desert of California. You see generations of a family that has done nothing but run this business. They explain the philosophy behind why they choose to bury pets, and why pets deserve burial just as humans do.Morris lets the camera do all the work. With the exception of two shots every other one is static. A talking head documentary that could probably fit the definition exactly. Morris knows when exactly to inject humor into the film, just enough to keep you interested. If you saw this film nowadays, you would expect it to be on Lifetime or some other obscure cable channel. With a third glance and possibly a fourth, you can see the message Morris is trying to get across. Everyone has a way of dealing with death. It is just how you deal with it that determines how comfortable you are with it.