Why can we never do anything at the most important moments?
I didn't mean to take so long between The Princess and the Warrior and Tom Tykwer's next film, 2002's Heaven, but my library's copy of the latter appears to have gone AWOL -- along with both of its copies of Skinwalkers, which was going to be my next werewolf movie -- so I've had to resort to Netflix, which is just fine with me, actually. Made in 2002, Heaven was the first film Tykwer directed but didn't write (The International, which opens next weekend, will be the second). Rather, it was written by acclaimed Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (in collaboration with Krzysztof Piesiewicz) as the first part of a trilogy entitled "Heaven, Hell and Purgatory," which was to be the follow-up to his "Three Colors" trilogy. Now, I've never seen any of Kieslowski's work, so I don't know how this compares to it, but as a Tom Tykwer film I find it to be phenomenally moving.
The story concerns an English teacher (Cate Blanchett) living in Italy whose attempted assassination of a notorious drug dealer results in the deaths of four innocent people. The authorities believe she's part of a terrorist organization, but their investigation hits a snag when the young policeman (Giovanni Ribisi) who's acting as her translator improbably falls in love with her and offers to help her escape so she can finish the job she started. This is a film that thoughtfully weighs the consequences of violent acts (none of which, incidentally, are shown on screen) and how they affect those who carry them out. (Blanchett's reaction when she finds out who was killed by her bomb is truly devastating. We believe her when she says later on that she intends to atone for those deaths.) One has to wonder how The International will stack up in comparison. I look forward to finding out.