|
 |
|
Heaven
***
Cinema Releases - August 9, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15.
France-Germany-Italy-UK-USA. 96 minutes. Directed by Tom Tykwer. Written
by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni
Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca, Alberto DiStasio, Giovanni
Vettorazzo.
"Heaven" begins with an explosion.
A woman wrapped in tension and fuelled by purpose marches into an office
block, puts a bomb in an important man's wastebasket and marches out again.
But the plan goes wrong. A cleaning lady empties the guy's bin right after
the bomber leaves, then takes her trolley to the elevator, where a civilian
and his daughter are riding. The wrong people are killed. The target goes
unhurt.
Philippa Paccard (Cate Blanchett), the woman we
met in the opening scene, is arrested. She's a British schoolteacher living
in the Italian city of Turin. She swears that the businessman in the office
is a high-powered drug dealer, that she wrote to the police begging for action
on countless occasions, and that she was at the end of her rope. The cops
keep asking the same questions: "Why do you insist you wrote letters? Who
was your real target? Who do you work for?"
The character played by Blanchett insists on speaking
to the police in English. It is her right, she protests. She wants the command
of her native tongue to communicate her devastation over seeing family and
students trashed by hard drugs and her frustration at bureaucratic impotence.
The policeman acting as translator, played by Giovanni Ribisi, is touched;
he resolves to help free his prisoner.
Up to this point, and during the escape, "Heaven"
is a film of style, grace and power. Blanchett and Ribisi are actors who
can suggest strong emotion through styles of behaviour and moments of silence,
and we're fascinated by how Blanchett, who seems respectable and virtuous
enough, got driven to the point she did. It's also nice to realise that while
the getaway process does not finish in the first five minutes, it is happening
at a pace that will not allow it to be the subject of the movie. We know
we're going to see more than the clichéd formation of a guard-prisoner
bond and a breakout action sequence.
On the other hand, "Heaven" never really does
figure out where to go. I wanted the film to challenge me, perhaps by probing
into the secrets and sadnesses of the Blanchett character's heart. Instead,
Blanchett goes on a final mission, then promises to eventually turn herself
in, and then we see her and Ribisi kiss, shave their heads and wander around
in the countryside for forty-five minutes. At the end of it all, the camera
pans up to the sky, suggesting that -- wow! -- this last moment of peace
before surrender is some kind of heaven. We're supposed to leave the cinema
raving breathlessly about the poetic significance of the
title.
All of this is well filmed, and individual sequences
play fine. The director, Tom Tykwer, has a thing for showing sympathetic
people, technically criminals, finding temporary moments of solace from their
pursuers; he also made "Run Lola Run" and "Princess and the Warrior". The
screenplay was one of the last to be written by Polish master Krzysztof
Kieslowski (1941-1996), who was fond of long, dreamy shots that emphasised
the intimate feelings of individual moments, especially in his famous "Three
Colours" trilogy. "Heaven" brings the filmmakers' sensibilities
together.
But I dunno. The set-up suggests a backstory of
angry details, and that is abandoned so we can get arty shots of outlaw lovers
and a final scene that, while pretty, seems calculated. Tykwer's destination
is engaging, but he leaves our initial reason for watching unresolved. This
is a good film that doesn't quite feel complete.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2002 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2002 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)