The seven films of Michael Cimino, one of the most uncompromising directors of New Hollywood, have left an indelible mark on the American psyche. Documentarist Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s road movie Michael Cimino, un mirage américain (2021) traces the legacy of the maestro – whose voice is combined with interviews and film clips projected onto the walls of buildings. The journey takes us from The Deer Hunter (1978) set in Mingo Junction, the hub of the steel industry, all the way to Heaven’s Gate (1980), with its landscapes that were transformed from heaven into hell.
The sense of loss is tangible, as Thoret encounters ordinary workers in bars and on the streets, depicted in Cimino’s films and deeply affected by his works. Experts and colleagues, too, reflect critically on the director, comparable to John Ford and trained in architecture. What was the driving force behind his projects and what ultimately derailed them from the tracks of conventional film-making paradigms at the time?
The documentary is presented in Sodankylä as part of the film history selection, together with Year of the Dragon (1985), a film that encapsulates recurring themes in Cimino’s works: love and the belief – tinged with irony – in the United States, the Promised Land for migrant communities. God bless America, land that I love.
Tuomo Marttila