Heaven Blu-ray Review
Mysteries of Redemption
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, March 22, 2013
German director Tom Tykwer made
Heaven after the international success of 1998's
Lola Rennt
(
Run, Lola, Run) and its challenging (some would say infuriating) follow-up,
The Princess and
the Warrior (2000). In
Heaven, Tykwer departed from his usual practice of writing his own
screenplay and took on the challenge of directing a film written by someone else—and not just
anyone. The script for
Heaven came from the celebrated Polish writing team of Krzysztof
Piesiewicz and the late director Krzysztof Kieslowski, creator of the
Three Colors Trilogy. At his
death in 1996, Kieslowski left scripts for a new trilogy to be called "Heaven, Hell and
Purgatory". After Tykwer directed
Heaven, the remaining two chapters were made by other
directors.
If one had only seen
Lola, with its flashy style and rapid-fire editing, Tykwer might seem an odd
match with Kieslowski. But
Lola's style is atypical for Tykwer, and it was dictated by that film's
manic story set in a milieu of small-time criminals to examine Tykwer's abiding interest in
chance, fate and the impact of random encounters. These same elements are fully on display in
the stylistically distinct
The Princess and the Warrior, and they can even be spotted in Tykwer's
approach to a mainstream thriller like
The International
. His preoccupations made Tykwer the
ideal creative partner for the Wachowskis on the ambitious
Cloud
Atlas, as well as the perfect
director (in the absence of Kieslowski) for
Heaven, which appears on its surface to be a
conventional tale of drug dealing, police corruption and revenge, but quickly burrows beneath
that surface to tell a different story, one that's harder to describe but, in Tykwer's hands, casts a
dreamlike spell.
It is impossible to discuss
Heaven without at least some revelation of the plot, but in today's
internet culture, the spoiler police are always on the alert, even with films that have been in
circulation for years. (No doubt someone out there would consider it too much to reveal that
Cinderella leaves a glass slipper on the palace stairs.) Although many elements of
Heaven's
literal plot are worth safeguarding, in my view they are all eventually irrelevant, because the real
story of the film is a mystery that can be experienced and pondered on many subsequent
viewings. However, for those who are unusually spoiler-allergic, I suggest skipping directly to
the technical sections.
One item can be disclosed up front: Echo Bridge has provided a watchable but generally poor
Blu-ray of
Heaven. Unfortunately, it appears to be the only option available for the foreseeable
future.
Heaven is set primarily in Turin, Italy, with dialogue in both English and subtitled Italian. The
two main characters are Philippa Paccard (Cate Blanchett), who is English by birth, and Filippo
Fabrizi (Giovanni Ribisi), a young Italian who has just started a career with the police or
"Carabinieri", following in the footsteps of his father (Remo Girone). The similarity of their first
names is not accidental.
In the opening scene, Filippo is training to be a helicopter pilot in a flight simulator, but flies too
high, drawing a rebuke from his instructor: "In a real helicopter you can't just keep flying
higher."
Filippo soon has other concerns. He is assigned to transcribe the interrogation sessions of
Philippa, who has been arrested as a terrorist. When she insists on being interrogated in English,
he also serves as translator. The charges against Philippa stem from a bomb she placed in the
office of one Vendice (Stefano Santospago), the president of a major electronics company, in an
elaborately choreographed sequence worthy of anything crafted by Hitchcock or DePalma. But
unforeseen events caused Vendice to survive unharmed, while others casualties were sustained.
Philippa claims that Vendice's company is a front for drug dealing, that his activities caused the
death of her husband and cost the lives of students at the school where she teaches English, and
that she repeatedly complained to the Carabinieri in writing and phone calls for a year before
deciding to take the law into her own hands. Indications of police corruption hang in the air as all
the evidence of her complaints has magically disappeared. At one point, Philippa collapses on the
floor of the interrogation room, overcome with fatigue and emotion, and Filippo rushes to fetch a
doctor and assist in rendering aid—and that's when something passes between the prisoner and
the young cop. Call it love, call it destiny, or call it the hand of God intervening, but both lives
are forever changed.
The second act of
Heaven follows Filippo's efforts to assist Philippa's escape from custody,
while the third act charts her flight across Italy (after several hitches), pursued by the entire force
of the Carabinieri. Tykwer doesn't stint on portraying the logistical details of these events, but
they become increasingly surreal and remote, because something else has taken center stage. The
nature of that "something" is what
Heaven asks the viewer to consider. At one point, someone
asks Philippa whether she loves Filippo. She reflects on her answer at length, and by the time she
gives it, you realize that it doesn't matter. However one chooses to label their entanglement, it is
so complete and transformative that familiar constructs no longer apply.
Heaven is a difficult film, because its heroine commits heinous acts, and although she
believes her cause to be just, she harms innocent people in the process. Even if Vendice is guilty,
how can Philippa's actions be justified? It is arguably unfair to cast such a role with an actress as
appealing as Cate Blanchett, since audience members will naturally be inclined to forgive a
character played by a luminous movie star, but to her credit Blanchett does not make Philippa a
nice or easy person. She never seeks sympathy or forgiveness, just as she never asks for Filippo's
help. Indeed, she tries for as long as possible to hold this strange young man at a distance, but
eventually even Philippa must accept that she is caught up in (for lack of a better word) a
spiritual event much larger than herself that is developing in ways she can't possibly fathom. In
the end, "heaven" may simply be surrendering to the unknown.
