You Ain't Seen Me, Right? - Gates of Heaven (1978)

Everyone can quote the entire Choose Life speech from Trainspotting and hum five different John Williams scores in turn, so if you want to impress at that single swingers evening, you're going to have to learn about more obscure films. Here's where You Ain't Seen Me, Right? comes in.

You Ain't Seen Me, Right? is brought to you by Daniel Palmer, of Part-Time Infidel web fame. He helps make my vocabulary good.

Gates of Heaven (1978)

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Legendary documentarian Errol Morris's debut feature is famous for a bizarre wager struck between Morris and Werner Herzog, wherein Herzog promised to eat a shoe if Morris completed and publicly exhibited his study of the 'animal disposal' business. True to his word, Herzog's forfeit was immortalized in the short film Werner Herzog Eats His Own Shoe (1980).

Gates of Heaven was the launching point for an inspired and annoyingly sporadic career dealing chiefly with institutional corruption - The Thin Blue Line (1988), Standard Operating Procedure (2008) - and the lives of those in unorthodox, often reviled, professions - Mr. Death: the Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999), First Person (2000). Morris finally earned Academy recognition for The Fog of War (2003), his stunning, candid portrait of former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara.

Morris divides Gates of Heaven into two sections; the first covering Floyd 'Mac' McClure and his battle against 'rendering' - processing animal matter into fat - out of a religiously inspired desire to treat all animals with dignity, the second exploring the Bubbling Well Memorial Park, a pet cemetery run by the stern, pious patriarch of the Harbert family, Cal, and his two sons.

Though its subject matter sounds morbid, Gates of Heaven manages to be both playful and profound, addressing serious issues under cover of wry humour. Morris establishes the style that has endured throughout his oeuvre, using talking head interviews and an informal, barebones approach to coax stories and truths from his subjects. By allowing the odd collection of individuals who inhabit this world to speak frankly and at length, Morris taps into the rich seam of delusion and desperation that runs through our dysfunctional relationship with animals.

McClure is a strange, quixotic character full of paradoxes; one moment declaring his deep love for all of God's creatures, the next laughing about an incident involving a cat trapped in a dryer and complaining that the stench from the rendering plant drowns out the smell of the meat on his dinner plate. The dynamic of the Harbert family makes for tense viewing, charged with enough regret and repression to make a compelling film on its own. Cal is a deeply religious man who blames the 'pet explosion' on the breakdown of the traditional family, his oldest son is a failed insurance salesman who expounds grand business formulas and trite motivational techniques and his youngest son is a lovelorn frustrated musician. It's all as uncomfortable as it sounds.

Gates of Heaven is a delightful, insightful examination of faith and loss; a quest to fathom what drives those who pursue peculiar vocations and the uniquely human phenomenon of seeking unconditional affection from another species. Morris exults in the lack of self-awareness displayed by those involved, archly drawing on the inherent absurdity of the mawkish anthropomorphism and spurious spiritualism, but he is cognizant of the trauma, loneliness and tragedy at the heart of such curious impulses. As always, he strikes a perfect balance between solemnity and levity.
Now, there won't be a pop quiz on any of this, but I'll be disappointed if I don't hear about Amazon struggling to fulfil the hundreds of rush orders for this film. More from You Ain't Seen Me, Right? next week.