New on video for October 13th/09 | “Sunchaser”

1996 | U.S. | 122 minutes
Director: Michael Cimino
Writer: Charles Leavitt
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jon Seda
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
Cdn video distributor: Warner Home Video

By the time Michael Cimino directed Sunchaser in 1996, his name had long-lost its star power. The film didn’t even get a theatrical release (at least not in Canada) and was later dumped on home video about a year later. Few people noticed. Worse, the video market was still releasing widescreen films in pan-and-scan, and the film’s tight framing especially suffered from this. Today it’s little wonder most never saw the film, and those who did probably never experienced it as it was intended.

Now that its finally out on dvd, Cimino’s strength as a visual stylist and complex story teller is once more apparent. It tells a story that builds towards an unusual climax that is both suspenseful and unconventionally uplifting. Sunchaser deserves revival treatment, as does Cimino himself. Today he’s the only Oscar-winning director who is widely looked upon with disdain; blamed for a crime he never committed.

In the late 1970s Cimino was at the top of his game. Besides helping to pen such successful films as Silent Running (1972) and the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force (1973), his first two films were box office hits; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, and The Deer Hunter (1978), with Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken.

The Deer Hunter was an enormous critical success too, and paved the way for it to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Fueled by this success, Cimino cashed in his chips to have his dream project made and United Artists (UA) agreed to finance it. The result was Heaven’s Gate; a film the industry still cites today as a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting artists have too much power.

A great deal has been written about Heaven’s Gate. The mostly commonly recited fact is that its cost ($36 million), and subsequent box office failing, single-handedly destroyed United Artists. Books such as Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate by Steven Bach, and well as its companion documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate (2004) have attempted to detail the extensive truth, but the perception still remains that one man (Cimino) and his film (Heaven’s Gate) destroyed one of the oldest studios in Hollywood (United Artists). Later editions of Bach’s book even added the subtitle “The Film That Sank United Artists.”

Permit me to set the record straight — it’s complete nonsense.

Anyone who went to the theaters in the 1970s would have seen the first hints of UA’s coming demise. It started around 1975 when a new logo appeared. It looked like this:

When United Artists was formed in 1919, its founders (Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith) were artists who wanted to help other artists realize their visions. That’s why it was called “United Artists.” Catering to corporate strategies was not on the agenda, and it served them well for the next half century.

Then along came Transamerica.

Transamerica was not interested in entertainment or “art.” Their acquisition of UA in 1967 was just another investment for them. It was also a branding opportunity, hence the logo redesign. (NOTE: Steven Bach, Senior VP of production at UA at the time, reported that the corporate heads was further considering changing the name United Artists to Transamerica Films)

But the downfall of UA really got underway in 1978 when its chief executives got fed up with their new masters and left to form Orion Pictures. The studio’s death was soon to be assured. In the end, Heaven’s Gate did finally force Transamerica’s hand, but it wasn’t its box office failing that did it. It was the bad press. Most of it from people who never saw the film.

From the moment production began in 1979 – until its final release in 1981 — Heaven’s Gate was regularly being crucified in every major publication and TV entertainment show in the known world. All of it — every single piece — bemoaned its budget. It was a media slaughterhouse, and Transamerica no longer wanted to be a part of it.

When it was finally over, Transamerica walked away with a comfortable profit (UA was sold for $320 million, up from an original investment of $185 million), but the tale that was spun was that Cimino had bankrupted a legendary movie company. It’s a falsehood that has needlessly persisted ever since.

For the next 15 years only powerhouse producers such as Dino De Laurentiis and Arnon Milchan (who produced Sunchaser) understood the real story of what happened with Heaven’s Gate. They liked the kind of films Cimino made, and had the clout and confidence to keep his career alive — and they did.

But Cimino told tales about flawed heroes who are destined towards hardships and sufferings — often in environments where they are alienated and hated — and that didn’t sit well in this new era that worshipped cartoon fantasies, blockbusters and happy endings. And critics — still erroneously blaming him for the United Artists debacle — drooled at every opportunity to pull out their sharpest knives to carve him up, and his films.

Throughout, though, Cimino never lost his flair for creating compelling moments through oddly beautiful imagery, such as this example from Desperate Hours (1990). It’s a simple scene involving a blood-spattered criminal and his FBI pursuers, but add in a mountain stream and the music of “Red River Valley,” and the result is an unusual piece of cinema that adds an unlikely Western flavour to a crime drama.

Sunchaser, produced six years later, ended up being Cimino’s latest and probably last film. In a way it’s a fitting swan song as it encompasses elements that have appeared in all of his films. Most notably its use of central characters from very specific classes and ethnic backgrounds — each with their own flaws — who are thrown together and discover a common bond. Here Woody Harrelson plays Dr. Reynolds, a wealthy cancer doctor who grudgingly treats a terminal patient named Blue (Jon Seda). Blue is a 16-year-old Navajo tough with a murder rap (he killed his abusive father) who learns he only has a month or two to live. With little left to lose, he pulls off an escape from his police escort and grabs the doctor as a hostage.

Though he manages his audacious escape with plausible skill, Blue’s ultimate goal does not seem quite as sensible; he wants to reach a “magic mountain” in Arizona where a medicine man is supposedly waiting to heal him of his cancer. Reynolds can only extol the virtues of Western medicine, and his being forced — at gunpoint — to drive Blue to this “Disneyland” is screwing up his career and social life. Their mutual disliking of one another has only just begun.

Between Reynold’s selfishness and pompous airs, and Blue’s gang-banger persona and brutishness, neither character is particularly pleasant to hang out with at first. But their destination — if it exists — slowly raises tantalizing possibilities. Especially for Reynolds. After years of seeing people (including his own brother) die from cancer, is there really hope for Blue through this Native superstition? In time Reynolds is seduced into wanting to find out for himself.

The excerpt below is from the later stage of their journey. The authorities are closing in and Reynolds — now a willing partner in Blue’s quest — schemes to avoid a police roadblock. It’s curious (and surely deliberate) that the car he’s driving looks identical to the one De Niro’s character drives in The Deer Hunter — a 1959 Cadillac. It’s only one of many visual clues that recalls moments in other Cimino films.

Sunchaser still suffers from the general unpleasantness of its main characters, particularly during the first half. There is also its investment in a story that relies upon some degree of appreciation and understanding of things which defy conventional explanation. It’s a tough sell. It lacks the exciting setting of the Vietnam War, which helped make The Deer Hunter as compelling as it is, or the suspenseful heist adventure that drives Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. But, as with all of Cimino’s films, the story he’s telling goes beyond that which exists on the surface.

First-time viewers will be hard-pressed to appreciate such oblique storytelling, but one can’t help but admire an artist who is still willing to try, in spite of all that is working against him.

• Theatrical release date: October 25, 1996 (23 screens)
• Video release date: October 13, 2009
• Production Budget: $31 million
• Worldwide Box Office: $21,508

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Deer Hunter seems an odd title for a film largely concerned with the Vietnam War but it helps hint there is more going on in the story than the casual viewer might realize.

The basic outline is simple; group of friends volunteer to fight in the Vietnam War and the experience changes all of their lives. The criticisms that exists mostly denounce the elements that either seem unrelated to the war, or misrepresentative of the conflict. But, as with many of the best films of this genre, the war is not the real focus. It is merely the catalyst that brings so many other things to the surface.

Some of the complaints include the prolonged wedding sequence that opens the film. Some perceive it as too long but, without it, the drama that follows would fail to have the impact it does. There are also the Russian Roulette scenes. Others claim their historical inaccuracy warrants their removal. But doing so would also remove some of the most startling drama ever captured on film.

All of these scenes — and many others — don’t have any apparent logic but, when strung together, they carry us through the emotional roller-coaster the characters ride. Most notable are the three musical pauses: “Can’t Take Me Eyes Off Of You” by Frankie Valli, Chopin’s Nocturne Op.15 no.3 in G Minor, and “God Bless America.” Though their use is not readily apparent, their placement at particular points in the story evoke emotions that are unlikely to surface in any other context.

The Deer Hunter is one of the premium examples of film art at its best, and a wonderful illustration of why Cimino warrants greater appreciation than is presently the case.