Directed by Errol Morris
"There's your dog; your dog's dead. But where's the thing that made it move? It had to be something, didn't it?"
When I was very young my family had a beloved pet dog named Thunder. He was a collie and apparently had nine lives like a cat. He loved to chase cars and was run over several times resulting in lots of shed tears and large vet bills, but he always survived. Ultimately, it was heart worms that would take poor Thunder down. The whole family gathered round as he passed-on one sad dark January day. We lived in the country and buried our deceased pets on the land. Most were unceremoniously buried in the woods far from the house. We’d put a big rock on top of the shallow grave to keep other animals from digging them up and that was that. Thunder was different. He was such a beloved part of the family that he was laid to rest in a place of honor under a lovely tree in the back yard. It was unusually cold the morning that my father went out to dig the grave. The ground was cold and hard and Poppy was breathing hard from his efforts. By the time the grave was dug, his beard and mustache were covered in tiny icicles from the condensation of his exhaled breath and his cheeks were bright red. He looked transformed by the experience.
I came across Errol Morris’ documentary film Gates of Heaven which is about a pet cemetery in Southern California while looking at a list compiled by Roger Ebert in 1991 called “The Ten Greatest Films of All Time”. Ebert’s blurb about the film ends like this “in the extraordinary centerpiece of the film, there is the old woman Florence Rasmussen, sitting in the doorway of her home, delivering a spontaneous monolog that Faulkner would have killed to have written.” How could I not be intrigued? I didn’t even add it to my “to watch” list, I just watched it right then and there. Afterall, Ebert admitted to viewing it more than thirty times without ever getting to the bottom of it so I had better not waste any time.
Even though the film is forty-five years old, and the pet industry/culture has grown so exponentially since then that you’d think it would be irrelevent, this was a fascinating film about life and the complexities of existence. The tableaux alone are worth the price of admission, but I love how Morris just lets people talk and reveal themselves. The most profound philosophy often comes from ordinary people who take time to contemplate the irony and mystery they find in their life and to make their own sense of it. There’s a little touch of the blues in there. And like good literature, this film is timeless.
I recommend watching this effervescent review from Siskel & Ebert on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GqWTjtd0ZwU?si=U_jODbGHP7eRCUNT&t=363\
P.S. A few days after watching Gates of Heaven, I watched a short film by Les Blank called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. When I started watching, I was unaware that there was a connection with Gates of Heaven. It seems that Herzog told Morris that if he made the film, he would eat his own shoe — and he did and Les Blank made a film about it!