The intense drama Heaven was an extraordinary challenge for Berlin filmmakers X Filme Creative Pool. For the first time, Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) made a film with foreign stars (Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi), in a foreign country (Turin and Montepulciano in Tuscany), and in foreign languages (English and Italian).  The film is based on a screenplay left behind by Krzysztof Kieslowski after his death in 1996; which he wrote with his co-author Krzysztof Piesiewicz (they also wrote the outstanding Trois Couleurs trilogy, Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge).

Tom Twyker was born in Wuppertal in 1965. He made his first Super 8 films when he was just an eleven-year-old movie buff, and began working in repertory cinemas in 1980. He took over responsibility for programming at Berlin's Moviemento theater in 1988. To make ends meet, he combined this job with work as a script-reader and made television profiles of various directors.

After making two short films ("Because", 1990 and "Epilog", 1992) he made his first feature film, 1993's Deadly Maria.

In 1994, Tykwer joined forces with Stefan Arridt, Wolfgang Becker, and Dani Levy to form the production company X Filme Creative Pool, which made fourteen films over the next seven years. They included Life is All You Get, for which Tykwer and Wolfgang Becker wrote the screenplay in 1995. Winter Sleepers (1996/97),  was followed by 1998's Run Lola Run, which became X Filme's first major international success. In Germany, where it was made, the film was the biggest German hit of the year, and it had spectacular box office sales throughout the world. In the United States alone, the film took in over seven million dollars, making it one of the most successful foreign films every shown there.

Tykwer's fourth film was The Princess and the Warrior, and marked the successful debut of the newly founded distributor X Verlieh AG. The Princess and the Warrior was first screened before an international audience at the 2000 Venice International Film Festival, and it has since played in over twenty countries. In 2001, the film also won a silver "Lola," the German Film Award for best picture.

How did you approach "Heaven"?
For me, the fact that it was a Kieslowski screenplay was never the critical issue, apart from the fact that I was sure I would be getting something interesting to read. That's not necessarily true of every script I'm offered. For me, when I read someone else's script, ideally it should read as if I could have written it-or even better, as something I would like to have written myself. But I had never experienced this effect before. In all these scripts, I had never found a specific reason why I had to make one of them and invest two years of my life in the project. Naturally, "Heaven" was especially interesting from the very beginning, because I knew of the authors and was familiar with them, and of course I admire them very much. But the deciding factor was that by the time I had finished reading the third page, I had forgotten about that background. I became immersed in the screenplay as if it were my own. I knew exactly what the story was getting at, not just explicitly but implicitly as well, atmospherically, beyond the moral conflicts and the narrative circumstances. I understood the original quality of the project and was able to see myself reflected in it. I also had a very strong feeling that the script connected with themes that I had taken up in my previous films, but in a way I had not encountered before. I definitely wanted to take on this challenge.

What precisely was the reason that the "Heaven " material appealed to you?
The screenplay creates an atmosphere that touches me directly. Even as I read it, I began to participate in shaping this world, this cosmos, that opened up before me. That's never the case with other people's scripts; with those I always have the feeling, really, that I have to illustrate someone else's language. In the case of "Heaven," I never had the impression that I was the illustrator of someone else's idea, not even for a second. I internalised the script immediately and developed visual ideas. Also, I immediately had ideas about casting that I wanted to pursue. I thought of Cate Blanchett right away. At the time, this was nothing more than a crazy idea that turned into an obsession. Incredibly, it immediately became a reality. The script was sent to Cate, and two weeks later she had signed on. It was not just unbelievable, but also a little uncanny. The dynamism that the project took on was amazing. Everything got rolling very quickly. I should also mention that I was still involved in post-production on The Princess and the Warrior, a film about two people that come together in a very difficult way and learn to love one another. One of them,  in this case the woman takes on the leading role in who teaches whom to love. A person who has withdrawn and locked himself up emotionally must, with unbelievable ardour and stamina, be opened up again to intensive emotions. Of course, this theme is very clearly found in Heaven as well. The roles are reversed, of course, and the setting is radically different, which gives the film a very different atmosphere.

Did the two projects provide inspiration for one another in any way?
I was excited about taking on the opposite perspective. Not just because of the sexual role reversal, but also because of the set of circumstances, which is almost more hopeless and fateful than in the earlier film. This shows the brilliance of Kieslowski and Piesewicz as writers. In their work, they start with very simple elements, but the elements then lead to a devastating web of complications. As an observer, you desperately want the heroes whom the film really forces you to get close to, to find their way out of this web. The great thing about it is how, with such simple strokes, this design is thrown onto the paper. There's a woman who commits an unforgivable error: she kills innocent people. But she still remains in the center of the film. As witnesses to her gradual development, we are forced to have an understanding of her and the transformation that she undergoes. This is a major challenge, because we really want to distance ourselves morally from this character. We have tried to make a film that overcomes this moral distance and opens the audience's hearts to people who appear to be lost.

Were you also interested in "Heaven" because another author had taken your themes and looked at them in a way that you might not ever have done?
My feeling is definitely that this is the script I always wanted to write but never did. It completes an aspect of my themes that I've always been waiting for. From the interior perspective, you always miss critical things. I had the feeling of suddenly having access to an outside perspective that led me to a path I hadn't yet taken. It is also important to note that I worked through the script again, in great detail, with Anthony Minghella. Anthony sees himself primarily as an author and only then as a director. In working with him, I saw that very clearly and benefited from it very much. With him, I once again carved out a path into the story until I had fully internalised it and made it completely my own. During the production, there was never a really pronounced feeling of focusing on Kieslowski and Piesewiczhwe always just had the attitude that we mustn't forget about them completely. But it was intended to be a completely independent film that represented an original vision. The last thing we wanted to do was act as executors of someone's will.

You kept the locations that were in the original material. Is there a reason why "Heaven has to take place in Italy?
That's another one of those things that was completely obvious to me. Just as it was clear to me very early on that The Princess and the Warrior had to take place in Wuppertal, and I knew all along that Lola had to run in Berlin, and Winter Sleepers belonged in Southern Germany, Heaven had to be set in Italy. In particular, this has something to do with a spiritual presence in the country. There is no better place than Italy in which to situate this connection to the theological and the transcendent in the film, especially in a city like Turin where the geometry is so unsettling and which, at the same time, has always been a center of the occult, one of the world's cult centers, with an unbelievable variety of shades of belief. As a counterpoint to that, I wanted to have the lyrical power of the Tuscan countryside; there is something about it that is very melancholy but simultaneously liberating. When the characters arrive in Tuscany, we know that things will take on a clarity that wasn't visible before. In Turin, where the film begins, the darkness and negativity still dominate.

The essence of a somewhat drab industrial city...
But one that is also incredibly beautiful and interesting, architecturally speaking, and totally underrepresented in film. I have always loved "Rocco and his Brothers" simply because it finally showed Turin in a little more detail. There is the same complicated contrast that I see in Wuppertal. Industry and the working world are there in the middle of an environment that developed historically. Despite all the modernity, the atmosphere of past centuries is present everywhere you go. But for me, the most amazing thing about Turin was discovering the positively brutal graphical severity of this city. It first became really clear to me when we flew over the city in a helicopter. You can overlay the city with a grid that is virtually oppressive, and naturally it has our characters trapped. So the heroes have to escape not only from the prison, but also from this city, which, because of its structure, doesn't let go of people. Tuscany is exactly the opposite. The soft hills whose colours blend into one another are symbols of an almost limitless landscape.

The protagonists' journey from darkness into light is also supported by colouring that reflects these qualities.
 
We filtered the material accordingly. Cameraman Frank Griebe and  I did a lot of experiments, and we were always looking for new nuances in order to take the film slowly from a certain hardness and violence toward a gentler, softer, and more open narrative style in terms of color and movement. We spent a long time figuring out how to do that without being too obvious about it. And yet we wanted it to be palpable, how the film moves from one set of circumstances to another and how the film itself becomes a different one.

In this way, you are also reflecting Philippa's development?
The development of both characters, actually. Of course, the film centers on freeing a woman who sees the world in rigid patterns, and on overcoming negativity.

And you had Cate Blanchett in mind from the beginning?
I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that she already has this whole range in her face. Cate's presence is ambiguity made flesh. Photographing her is incredibly demanding. She has a face that is always capable of changing. At the same time, there are very few people in the world who are as much in command of what they project, not just technically but also in terms of their aura, as she is. She has mastered the interplay between absolute control and completely letting go of her emotions. That's very important, because it is also a hallmark of the character she plays: a person who, in a virtually obsessed state, is capable of committing a controlled act that she is also able to justify within her schematic way of thinking. Because she allows emotion and love into her life again, her view of the world changes as well.

Was it clear to you from the beginning that you would bring your old team - Frank Griebe as cameraman, Mathilde Bonnefoy as editor, etc. on board?
First of all, I wouldn't have made the film if X Filme had not produced it. The work with Maria Kopf, Stefan Arridt, and Manuela Stehr was the groundwork, which after all was already in place. Our terms were that "Heaven" would be made according to our rules and our artistic parameters. For me, having my most important colleagues at my side is part of that. Especially after this film, I was left with the realization that I don't want to lose this group, with whom, after all, I have grown up and grown into my films. I need these people in order to understand what I want to do in a film. Through Frank, I learn why an image I have in mind makes sense. Through production designer Uli Hanisch, I learn why an atmosphere in a particular space calls for a particular colour. And through Mathilde, I learn why a film is written not before the shoot, but after the shoot.


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