Gates of Heaven

I have to admit that if it were not for Roger Ebert's acclaim I would have not lasted more than half an hour and missed the brilliance in this movie. I can understand the negative reviews and the complaints about the pace and topic. Still, I admire Errol Morris's bravery for putting so much time and effort into such esoteric ideas. At the time this movie came out I think it would have been breaking new ground on big ideas. Now it is commonly understood that pets hold a surprisingly important role in people's lives. There are any number of books on the topic now about how much we do for our pets but I suspect when this movie came out it was a new idea, and in that Errol Morris put together something important.

Never has a film allowed us to see ourselves quite so clearly. Although I was initially enthralled by the eccentric nature of the subject, and the people, it slowly dawned on me... this is us! This is me! We survive emotionally by making up reality, creating a world, simplifying the unknowable, reducing the complex mysteries into manageable bits. We talk without thinking and then veer off to the next thought, and then the next, unaware all the while that we are creating delusions that allow us to drive away the profound sense of loss and melancholy. Our strategies are sorrowful, comic, heartfelt, rational, humorous, loving and maddening. Instead of clever editing, fancy shooting or creating a point of view, Morris lets the camera roll and the people speak their hearts. What we find out is there a lot going on and nothing at all. It is a hilarious, painful film. Nothing else like it.

Overall I'd say this movie was fair, but there's a few scenes which make it worth renting. Boring in parts, crafty editing could have added interest and entertainment. The scenes with the guy who ran the "rendering" business were pure gold.

Utterly captivating. There's no logical reason this movie and its characters should be so fascinating, but they are. A true filmic experience, not to be missed.

This documentary was poorly shot-- it was a good concept, but the presentation was so bad, that within the first 10 min, I could tell it was going to be a stinker. I kept fast forwarding to see if it got better later on, but it never did.

I forced myself to watch the entire film before making a judgement, and there must be something I'm not getting. Maybe I don't watch enough documentaries or something, but I can easily imagine a much more entertaining (and cohesive) one. The characters are interesting at first, but it seems like Morris just let them talk and talk and talk until I was tired of them. If that was Morris' intent then I rescind my poor review.

Too much time spent on lonely people who talked endlessly about everything except their pets. In fact, there wasn't one memorable story about anybody's pet. No matter how bad a movie is, if I paid for it I'm going to watch it!! However, this is the first movie I couldn't finish. With the exception of maybe two people interviewed, they were just plain boring. Their stories had no beginning or end......just a bunch of ramblings from people that did nothing more for me except feel sorry for them. I'm sorry.....I just didn't get it. :(

it might have been good, but i couldn't see it because itunes movies skip constantly. It may have well been a slide show.

The beauty of this documentary is its soul. No it doesn't move like some fast-paced, super-stylized, super edited thing which becomes more the voice of the director than the people in the documentary - the beauty of this one is you really feel like you're there. It was kind of pleasant to sit here watching this in 2008 getting a little window into what it was like in 1977 - the sites, the clothes, the hairstyles, the way people talked, and mostly - their reverence for animals. Or, their particular animal that died. I was pleasantly surprised that Morri's style is not to control what's happening on the screen, instead he achieves the most comfortable subjects known to man sitting in front of the camera and opening up about their lives. It's cool that it ends up not just being about animals - you actually see the little skeletons in the closet, the little annoyances people have, their idiosyncrasies, the things that bother them come out in their dialogue. This was really refreshing to catch a little bit of 'real people' and 'reality' and non-plastic-ness in our over-packaged, over-processed, over-directed, over image-ified society. These are real people talking, and that's really cool.

Boring! Don't waist your money! Goes nowhere and ends nowhere!