Gates of Heaven
1978
Errol Morris
I am a member of a higher than average number of "clubs" that involve group discussions (only "higher than average" because I assume that the average for the human races hovers somewhere between one and zero), and I think about why that is sometimes. What motivates me to go out to the book club and the film club and chat with people? You can maybe even rope in the propensity to "interview" people to the point I'm trying to make here, the interviewing happening a lot more back in the day but still remaining an important part of my personality, and my career too, now that I think about it. My point is this, though: I think I'm motivated to do all this shit mostly to get to the heart of the human condition. Because I can feel it sometimes, like maybe once per club meeting, just for a moment, that brief flash of inspiration, that we got there, to the deep molten core of this thing we call life. Something that someone says blows me away on an emotional level, something that is so fucking true that I just can't help but marvel at it in that moment. That makes the effort worth it.
The moment that I knew that Errol Morris felt the same way was the monologue by the old lady in the middle of this movie. It's the only possible reason that the camera could've continued to roll through it all, way beyond any semblance of this monologue having anything to do with pet cemeteries anymore. Like when she started ranting about her son hauling sand, I knew that it was something special, and that Errol Morris absolutely fucking knew it too, in that moment. That somehow we—the director, the audience, the old lady, all of us together—were putting our human consciousness together and touching the divine.
Frank, who is the Film Club member who chose Gates of Heaven for his "Seen It Already" pick this quarter, sent me two questions that make me know that he's thinking about this movie in the same way:
1) Do you think it's possible to really capture genuine humanity on camera?2) Are you as compelled as I am by people treating small everyday things as the most important thing in the world?
The old lady answers question number one beyond any shadow of a doubt, but really, the rest of the movie does almost as good of a job. This documentary is about... hmm, what is it about? Ostensibly, it's about pets and what owners do with their pets after those pets die, and it's about people who care deeply enough about this to design resting places for those pets. But is it really about that? There are some really nice tangents scattered around this beautiful movie. Like the wayward sons of the cemetery owner, one of whom plays music throughout the canyon where the cemetery is located. Or all the thoughts about what happens after we die, with the money line that everyone quotes from this movie about what makes pets move, and how it must be their spirit.
Question two probably speaks more to the heart about my thoughts about pets in general, both in real life and in my reaction to the pet owners in this film. I've traditionally been anti-pet, and have a hard time understanding why people would own flesh-eating monsters dogs at all, but when you boil it down, the inner conflict is probably more that I can't understand why these particular people treat this particularly small everyday thing as the most important thing in the world. I can't understand why you'd keep a dog after, say, they bite your aunt's nose off, ya know? Just bury 'em in the graveyard after that, c'mon.
But when put that way—"isn't it compelling?"—in the context of this beautiful film, I definitely get it. I think it's helpful that there is no narration, so I'm not being told to care about these pets in the same way that their owners are. I think it's also helpful that there aren't too many actual pets featured in Gates of Heaven, just humans (the big exception is the dog toward the beginning, whose owner spends a solid three minutes forcing to "sing," and this is by far the worst three minutes of the film). The salt-of-the-earth human beings that we spend time with throughout the documentary gave me the space to appreciate what they were trying to say about this small, important part of their lives, and I did absolutely get there. The still shots of all the pet graves, and their beautiful little etched sayings (e.g. "I knew love; I had this dog"), sincerely got to me, and choked me up a little.
It's not that I now understood the thing with pets, it's that I continued to understand the way of humans. And Gates of Heaven had a beautifully understated way of showing that genuine humanity. It felt like that moment in book club, when someone says something simple and pure and it just takes my fucking breath away. I love that feeling.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: Our small group discussion turns toward Scent of a Woman, in which Al Pacino no doubt does something noteworthy, I guess we'll find out!
6 comments:
totally agree, the old woman monologue is exactly what I was thinking of when I asked that question
One of my favorite things is when a person overexplains a thing to try and sound intelligent, but they just end up sounding like a lunatic. Older brother explaining his philosophies on business is perfect example of this to me. Showing the hires all his old trophies is so funny to me
Supplemental viewing material- Les Blank's "Werner Herzog Eat's His Shoe", a docu-short where in, Herzog who had bet Erroll Morris that he didn't have the guts to actually make a movie, has to eat his whole shoe. Blank, Herzog, and Morris are all, I think, crucial, in blurring the lines between documentaries and fictional films. To them, there is almost no distinction.
I think the thing I love about this one is Errol Morris has made films about a man being railroaded by corrupt police (Thin Blue Line), Robert McNamara defending his position as "not a war criminal" (Fog of War), and Stephen Hawking literally explaining the universe (Brief History of Time), and he treats these people and their desire to bury their pets as equally important. It's all just about humanity.
Last thought: I really think its crucial that Morris displays an affectionate but impartial eye on all these people; he doesn't judge or praise any of them, he just lets them exist. In a lot of docs, the guy who runs the glue rendering factory would be an outright villian; in this he's just a guy who shrugs his shoulders and says "the elephants at the zoo have to go somewhere guys". Incredible.
Since I've seen this film, I keep thinking about how I would react if I met these people at a party. Like say some dude came up to me and told me that he incinerated zoo animals for a living. I think that I would probably react in an interested way. I wouldn't immediately jump to assuming that this dude in front of me is a VILLAIN in any sense. Even if I might disagree with what he does (and I'm not even saying I do, this is just an example). What's cool about this movie is that I am reacting the same way. As you said, there is a version of this where that animal disposal guy is dastardly, or the trophy guy is treacherous, and disdain for those types of people is fine but much less true to life. If some idiot started telling me about his trophy collection, I'd be bemused. And that's how I felt watching this, and that's what makes Gates of Heaven true to life.
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