Tom Tykwer: 'I didn't want to be blamed for messing up this myth'

When Tom Tykwer agreed to direct Kieslowski's last film, he knew the purists would give him a hard time. By Stephen Applebaum

Steven Spielberg helped Stanley Kubrick's film-making career transcend death by guiding his final project, A.I., to the screen. Now, Tom Tykwer, the hotshot German director of the international hit, Run Lola Run, has done much the same for Krzysztof Kieslowski. The morally enquiring mind behind The Double Life of Veronique, Dekalog and the acclaimed Three Colours trilogy, Kieslowski died prematurely in 1996, robbing cinema of one of its foremost artists. At the time, he and his writing partner, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, were working on another triptych, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, of which only the first part, Heaven, was completed.

Apparently, Kieslowski had always intended the trilogy to be made by young directors. So Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein, a fan of the Polish film-maker, set out to fulfil his wish. He had already given a first-look deal to Tykwer's Berlin-based production company, X Filme Creative Pool, following the success of Run Lola Run; he now offered him Heaven.

"The screenplay interested me because of the name on the front," recalls the 37-year-old, "but I never thought I'd direct it. I didn't want to be the one who's blamed for messing up the testimony of this myth that Kieslowski has become in our sphere." Ten pages in, however, trepidation gave way to stunned recognition. Heaven resonated like no other script he had been sent before or since. Actually, it was already evident that Tykwer had an affinity with Kieslowski. With its three-part variation on the themes of chance, coincidence and fate, Lola was practically a synth-pop spin on the late director's 1982 movie, Blind Chance. "It's hard not to admire his work," says Tykwer, apparently reluctant to acknowledge the debt explicitly. "I couldn't take anyone who said they're bored by Kieslowski seriously." Reading the Kieslowski/Piesiewicz screenplay, Tykwer was struck by the "clarity of the concept, and by the transition from clearly defined genre framing [it begins as a taut thriller] to complete abstract painting. This," he explains, "is what I have constantly tried to achieve in my films: to have the film-making itself always balance on that junction between reality and dream-like hypnosis." He also found that recurring themes and ideas expressed in his own work had been significantly refined. "It was as if I was reading one of my own scripts, had I been a really great writer," he laughs.

In an additional twist of fate that might even have made the rather dour Kieslowksi smile, Heaven corresponded, to a high degree, to the film Tykwer was just finishing – The Princess and the Warrior. Highly personal, this languid mix of thriller and metaphysical romance revolves around a young nurse who helps an ex-soldier, Bodo, to escape his feelings of guilt over his wife's accidental death, and live and love again. When Bodo literally splits into two at the end, leaving his negative side behind, it echoes a moment in Tykwer's own life.

"I have suddenly had this shocking experience of seeing myself and the way I behave and not liking it," he reveals. "Sometimes you need to meet someone who really grabs you and shakes you, and tells you to change perspective. Usually, that's a loving person [in this case it was the film's star, Franka Potente]. At the end, because you have been loved, you can explore yourself and find your true self, possibly." No wonder he responded so strongly to Heaven. In a mirror image of The Princess and the Warrior, a young carabiniere (Giovanni Ribisi) is touched by the anguish of a woman (Cate Blanchett) who tried to bomb a drug dealer, and accidentally killed several innocents instead. He helps her to escape from jail, and offers her another chance to kill. His unconditional love redeems them both.

Although laden with biblical allusions (Adam and Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, Calvary, the Ascension), Heaven is not a religious film. But it does portray a kind of, almost Blakean, spirituality, which Tykwer says informs his own life. "The way Kieslowski presented love, as a concept under which people can survive, is very much something I believe in. Love is not rational, and yet it is what makes us live. On that level I feel very much that I'm living a life that is devoted to love, and that is a very spiritual existence in a way. But I absolutely believe that the power to discover, or not to discover, love is within us. We don't need any god for that. You could say I'm a spiritual atheist."

By the time he had finished reading Heaven, Tykwer must have felt like he was in a Kieslowski film himself. Was it fate or chance that had brought them together? Such was his confidence that he made changes to the screenplay (aided by producer Anthony Minghella), rather than approaching it like some sacred text. He changed the location for a symbolic lovemaking scene from a dark wood to an exposed hilltop. Ribisi confirms that the original version was far more allegorical.

Heaven recently won best film at the Gaia International Film Festival. However, critics were divided when it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in March. Some missed the kinetic nature of Run Lola Run; others felt that its more abstract scenes lacked Kieslowski's subtle handling. Although he is keen to hear people's opinions, no judgment on the film is likely to be more satisfying to Tykwer than that of Krzysztof Piesiewicz.

"He said it was, 'the best of both worlds'," beams the director. "It's the best praise I've ever gotten, because that's exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to stay truthful to Kieslowski's intentions but make our own film."

'Heaven' is released on Friday