The tagline for Tom Tykwer’s Heaven could easily read “Krzysztof Kieślowski Rises!” If Tykwer’s unofficial “Blind Chance” trilogy (Wintersleepers, Run Lola Run, and The Princess and the Warrior) is as punishing as Kieślowski’s Three Colors then Heaven brings to mind the late Polish director’s more somber later work. Though less morally ambiguous than any of the Dekalog films, this first part of Kieślowski’s planned “Divine Comedy” trilogy—which pits a heroic schoolteacher and her inside-man-cum-guardian-angel against Turin’s corrupt carabinieri—is every bit as ambitious and riveting.
Philippa (Cate Blanchett) kills four people with a homemade bomb intended for the man responsible for pushing drugs on her students. Tykwer evokes his obsession with coincidence via a chillingly choreographed shot of Philippa walking away from the building where she’s planted her bomb. Heaven, though, isn’t defined or burdened by portraitures of happenstance; indeed, this may be the only scene in the film that directly fiddles with the concept of blind chance. Elsewhere, Tykwer’s solemn overheads suggest the presence of a higher being, while a cutaway to a colossal clock’s many gears calls attention to the film’s moral mechanism.
Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz’s screenplay grapples with a woman’s responsibility to the world when no one will listen. Though devastated by the news that she’s destroyed innocent lives, Philippa will only accept punishment after drug lord Vendici (Stefano Santospago) accepts his. And through it all, there’s no escaping the film’s divine correlations. Heaven begins inside a helicopter flight simulator and ends with Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi’s star-crossed lovers slowly rising to heaven aboard a real helicopter. And while Philippa’s final confrontation with Vendici evokes an angel delivering God’s judgement, Heaven is itself non-judgmental, hauntingly wallowing in its characters’ moral confusions.
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