Silver Screenings

“Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.”

So writes novelist Agnes Sligh Turnbull on a universal truth: To have a pet is to lose a pet. The day your pet dies is a day you’re not likely to forget.

We were thinking about this when we watched the quirky 1978 documentary, Gates of Heaven, about a pet cemetery in California – rather, make that two pet cemeteries. One went belly up (so to speak) in the 1970s, and the other is still operating today.

A documentary about burying pets sounds morbid, but this film is fascinating and, in its way, life affirming. People discuss their pets and the ways they enriched their lives. In order to drive home the point, director Errol Morris gives us headstones from the cemetery:

• “I knew love – I had this dog.”
• “Felix: My Buddy”
• “Forever in Our Hearts”
• “For all the love you gave to me and asked for nothing in return.”

This is a low-key film with outdated 1970s clothing and technology, but the emotions are fresh and the people are compelling.

Gates of Heaven uses a formula of twos, continually pitting two philosophies or worldviews against each other, almost like discordant couplets. There is no narrator to explain things to us. The people speak for themselves, and they have much to say.

The first part of the film examines the defunct Foothill Pet Cemetery. The founder, Floyd, is a sad, soft-spoken man in a wheelchair.

He talks about his desire to bury animals humanely. “We’re giving them a resting place in response to their love and devotion,” he says. He has more respect for animals than, say, a rendering plant.

Funny he should mention that. We meet Mike, the operator of a local rendering plant, a pragmatist who defends his line of work. “Lemme tell ya,” he says, “you have a horse that dies on a Saturday, and it’s 102 degrees, you don’t have time to bury it. You want it gone, now.”

Ironically, both men have the “Find a Need and Fill it” approach to business. But their distaste for each other is palpable.

When the Foothill Pet Cemetery fails due to financial setbacks, 450 animals must be relocated to a new cemetery. But before Morris takes us there, we meet Florence, an older lady in a bright apron who lives across from the old cemetery.

Florence sits in a doorway as she talks, discussing her life, her cat, and her son. There is no contrasting character for her, because she contrasts herself; she often ends her own stories with, “It didn’t happen that way.”

Next we’re taken to Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park in Napa, where we meet founders Cal and his wife, Scottie. Cal, a man of firm opinions, sees a “pet explosion” due to working women and lower childbirth rates. “When [a] young woman comes home, ” he says, “she has to have…something to mother, something to love.”

Cal’s two sons, Phil and Dan, also work in the family business. The eldest, Phil, is an overachiever, a former salesman who displays trophies/plaques on his desk and on the wall behind him. This hardware is meant to Impress.

Contrast him with his younger brother, Dan, a laid-back musician with an affected hippie persona. Dan talks about his broken heart and writing music. Sometimes he sets up an amp and electric guitar outside on a hill to play his music. “You can hear it all the way down the valley,” he boasts. This, too, is meant to impress, although one would have to ask the neighbours about that.

Roger Ebert included Gates of Heaven in his 2002 book, The Great Movies, and we don’t disagree with this decision. The first few minutes of the film seem slow, even a bit plodding, but soon you’re immersed and can’t look away.

This is director Morris’s first film. The Oscar-winning* filmmaker first had the idea about pet cemetery documentary when he saw a newspaper article about the 450 animals needing to be exhumed and relocated.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog famously made a bet with Morris saying he would eat his shoe if (A) Morris made the film and (B) showed it in a cinema. Morris did both, prompting Herzog to make the short, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980).

Have you seen Gates of Heaven? If not, we urge you to watch it. This thoughtful film, with unforgettable people, will have you mulling it over for days.

Gates of Heaven – Written & directed by Errol Morris. Gates of Heaven, 1978, Colour, 85 mins.

*The Fog of War (2004) won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.