Thursday, January 02, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: No sympathy for characters in Heaven

By Bob Grimm

Cate Blanchett is an incredible actress whose recent films, besides the Lord of the Rings movies, have been beneath her talents. Heaven, a strange film in which she plays a sympathetic bomber, continues her trend of great performances in mediocre movies.

The film's director is Tom Tykwer, who made the spectacular Run, Lola, Run. That movie's excellence had me optimistic for something worthwhile, and Blanchett's presence upped the ante. Sadly, Heaven struggles to make an idiotic character appear virtuous, a feat even Blanchett can't accomplish.

She plays Philippa, an English teacher in Italy who tries to murder a drug dealer. Her misguided bombing attempt results in big tragedy and multiple deaths. These actions are deplorable, and yet the film wants us to feel for Philippa's trials and tribulations. The fact that drugs were involved is supposed to justify her murderous ways, something that didn't swim with me.

So I was distracted. Distracted for the whole movie's running time. There are moments when Blanchett is so brilliant, so luminous, I could almost forgive the film's pretentiousness. Alas, I just had a hard time buying a moronic bomb suspect as someone worthy of any kind of sympathy.

The movie offers up a strange love scenario in which one of the officers interrogating the captured Philippa (a restrained Giovanni Ribisi) becomes smitten and helps her escape. The film tries to portray their relationship and eventual fate as something beautiful and spiritual.

Yet, with all the beauty that Tykwer, a decent visual artist, gets on the screen, I still couldn't get past the feeling that these characters were a couple of assholes. Near the film's finale, both characters shave their heads. The movie is not good enough to justify buzzing their celebrity noggins.

The movie was written by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, who, apart from having the most difficult name to spell in the history of man, directed the famous trilogy Red, White and Blue. Heaven was to have been part of another trilogy, and while it's admirable that Tykwer has given it a shot, his work doesn't come close to the excellence of Kieslowski's films.