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Gates of Heaven | 
 enlarge | Director: Errol Morris
Actors: Scottie Harberts, Florence Rasmussen, Floyd Mcclure, Ed Quye, Mike Koewler
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $1.90
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 24690
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 83 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 1006003
UPC: 027616902313
EAN: 0027616902313
ASIN: B00094AS6I
Theatrical Release Date: 1978
Release Date: July 26, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW AND SEALED SHIPS FIRST CLASS MAIL
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Product Description
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 departed loved 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).System Requirements: Running Time 73 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 027616902313 Manufacturer No: 1006003
Amazon.com
Errol Morris launched his fascinating, Oscar-winning career with this instant classic, a documentary about pet cemeteries. The subject is darker and weirder than even Stephen King could dream up, yet the movie is also wildly funny and lingeringly sad. As Morris gets his people to soliloquize for the neutral camera, they confirm that their love for their pets is utterly sincere--and that eccentricity runs deep in the American grain. Although the ostensible topic is animals, the owners and clients reveal much more about the species that walks on two legs; the depth of human feeling on display is bottomless, and the ability of humans to anthropomorphize their pets is astounding. (Surely some of these animals must be utterly bewildered by their keepers.) The film looks at two California cemeteries, one failed, one flourishing. First-time viewers often have the experience of laughing through the first half of the picture--this is an outrageous group of people who wouldn't be out of place in a Christopher Guest comedy--and then growing emotionally involved. Morris's flat, dead-on style makes the movie a mirror, so that cynics will see a fool's parade of weirdoes, while pet lovers will warmly identify with so much tenderness toward animals. (And Roger Ebert, the film's biggest champion, will see one of the 10 best movies ever made.) It's a strange experience, but likely one you'll never forget. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Interesting September 11, 2008
Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
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?
 It's not only about a pet cemetary... June 16, 2008
Iconoclast
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 [...].
 ...A little bit disappointing February 8, 2008
a patriot (the Bronx)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
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 might have exagerated.
I bought this DVD soley because of Ebert's recomendation and after viewing it, I felt that I had wasted 20 bucks. I could have bought many different films but got this one instead. I don't yet understand why so many intelligent people love this documentary; Actually - I had trouble sitting through this one without falling asleep.
You should make sure that you have already seen this film - and liked it - before purchasing the DVD. Maybe in time I will watch it again and appreciate it more.
Strange, Sad, Hilarious & Profound May 14, 2006
McGillicutty (The Sooner Nation)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
Doggone January 20, 2006
Cj D. Vries (CapeTown, RSA)
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
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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