MOVIES . . . THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE

The most objective study so far of the political storms that swept across China in 1989, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" has drawn fire both from both the Tiananmen Square dissidents (who say it discredits the movement) and the Chinese government, notes reviewer Emily Mitchell. In three hours of interviews, television news coverage of the protest and archival footage, the movie re-examines those seven weeks when the student discontent of April grew into a mass movement that culminated in the June 3 carnage when the military ended the protests. Television in the West promoted a simplified view of a unified leadership among the students with a single, well thought-out goal. As filmmakers Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon view it, emotion outweighed reason at every turn, and as events rushed forward, romantic notions about democracy spun out of control.