Gates of Heaven (1978)

    The first splice of b-roll comes more than twenty minutes into Errol Morris’s debut documentary.  This is in the form of a backhoe excavating pet graves and is as matter-of-factly composed as the preceding interviews.  As apt introduction to the intriguing world of Morris films, the tight 4x3 framing includes all necessary elements and manages to strike a consistent quirkiness that will continue on in the filmmaker’s oeuvre.
    We are introduced to an eclectic grouping of Californians whom all have some stake in the then recent introduction of the much-needed pet cemetery.  Whether they be the family of keepers, the neighboring rendering factory whose business exists on the opposite end of the spectrum, the pet owners whose beloved family members end up in the ground, or the local woman with some connection to the cemetery that rambles for five minutes and leaves any semblance of a pet focused film in the dust.  Such stream of consciousness interviewing has been the epitome of Morris’s infatuation/obsession with interviewing people.  More than any other filmmaker, he has the uncanny ability to find the most interesting of characters.
    Gates of Heaven, fascinatingly, has not only maintained a state of social relevance, but may have even increased in its application to modern day American life.  In a world where Paris Hilton totes her Chihuahua around like a toddler made of gold, where airlines/hotels cater to pet owners, where we care more for dying animals than homeless people and probably spend the money to prove it, a film about the final resting place of our beloved companions could only strike the right chords.  Unless of course, it deviates from the story on the outset, allowing the characters to intermingle in their own thoughts and opinions whether they be pertinent to the topic or not.  Morris is undoubtedly smitten with such outcome and there is no reason the viewer should feel any different.
     Perhaps the promise Werner Herzog made to eat his own shoe should such a film be made (the fact that he did it at the film’s completion is irrelevant) figured in to seeing the film through.  Regardless, it is a story, or rather a narrative of our culture, that is relevant to understanding said culture and telling of our priorities.  Morris strikes a pertinent chord with his first feature length documentary and it is an oh so delicious taste of things to come.