‘Gate’ to our past

As I was watching what Kevin Baker called a “flawed” film in his story on “Gangs of New York” and the immigrant experience (“An Immigrant Tale That Scratches Off History’s Veneer,” Dec. 29), my mind flashed back 22 years to a much better film about the immigrant experience, class war, robber barons and political corruption: Michael Cimino’s much-maligned “Heaven’s Gate.” Baker says that one of “Gang’s” triumphs is that “it rips away the veil of our own conventional history and replaces it with the brawling, bleeding, yearning America that was really our national past.” Sounds like a description of “Heaven’s Gate.”

Steve Barr

Los Angeles