Heaven Reviews

I remember it very well, when ‘Lola rennt’ was released, there was some buzz about Tom Tykwer but afterwards he eventually made two rather osbcure movies much less accessible to the mainstream audience than ‘Lola rennt’ which was visually quite appealing but above all lots of fun. He first made ‘Der krieger und die Kaiserin’, also starring Franka Potente, a thoughtfull but difficult to follow drama and, after that, he made this movie from a script written by Krzysztof Kieslowski just before his death (it is part of a trilogy called 'Heaven’ , ‘Hell’, ‘Purgatory’). This movie was Tykwer’s first international production and he managed to get one of the best actresses around, Cate Blanchett. Honestly, pretty much like ‘Der krieger und die Kaiserin’, the whole thing was quite intriguing but I also had a hard time to follow what the whole thing was getting at. Basically, it is actually a thriller but whereas US thrillers tend to dumb down the story with some cheap thrills, here, it is the opposite, you get some pretty obscure scenes and you never really understand what the hell is going on with the characters which makes for a compelling but also, at times, frustrating viewing. To conclude, even though it is nothing really remarkable, it remains an interesting feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Tom Tykwer and Krzysztof Kieslowski.