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The Ninth GateRating:
Release Date: 20 August, 2002 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $11.98 You SAVE: $3.00! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
The Ninth Gate Reviews
Shear Brilliance.
The promotions for this film made it out to be a fast-paced, rock video devil hunter yarn. Instead, it is has a relaxing pace and a fairly quiet tone while still keeping the audience on their toes.
The biggest complaints about this film always come from the MTV generation. If you want more action and demon-fighting, watch Spawn or End of Days. I actually enjoyed those two, but that's another story. There are always those who complain about films that don't take off as soon as they begin and last more than 1 1/2 hours. Here's my advice to them: just sit still and pay attention for Christ's sake.
I always love a break from the pure, fair-haired, boyish hero type. The Ninth Gate gives the audience a protagonist that some may dislike, but grow to like him as he actually becomes an even worse person during the film's progress. No actor on this earth could have portrayed Dean Corso better than Johnny Depp. The gifted Depp seamlessly blends sarcasm, violence, style, and charm into the mercenary book detective.
Corso's ally (Emmanuelle Seigner) appears in the form of a beautiful but plainly dressed wandering college student with supernatural powers. With time, she proves herself to be a trustworthy protector and a perfect match for Corso. Seigner's performance is comparable to Depp's, as her character's personality parallels Corso's to a certain degree.
Frank Langella is also noteworthy of his portrayal of business tycoon Boris Balkan. Langella lends a strictly professional and calm attitude to his character, but also gives him a hint of eccentricity and a cold, forbidding, and dangerous side that Corso crosses midway through the film.
The plot is very original and only grows greater with a well-written script and an eerie, beautiful soundtrack. The acting is superb, as already described. The special effects are masterfully done. Most do not understand the film's finale, and the commentary by Polanski makes it clear that he desires it to remain a mystery. In a nutshell, though, the image of Corso walking toward the castle suggests that his adventure is just beginning and he is entering even more dangerous territory than before. Corso's "angel" even tells him near the end that the game is over for Balkan, but not for him.
In conclusion, this film is incredible and highly recommended to those who enjoy a leisurely paced thriller.
The Ninth Gate
Roman Polanski's film noir-ish The Ninth Gate (in which rarebook dealer Dean Corso (Depp) is enlisted by collector Boris Balkan(Langella) to search for The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows, a book rumored to have been co-written by satan himself), starts off pretty well, but fades fast. What begins as an interesting, engaging quest through bibliophilia and satanism (with Lena Olin along for the ride as a partially clothed wicked witch) ends in something nearing farce, something that made me laugh, and something that might testify to Roman Polanski's weakening powers.
Depp's character is a kind of book detective/con-man, and Depp, as usual, gives his all. We first see him bilking a pair of rich folks out of a first edition Don Quixote for four thousand dollars, and most of the first act is dedicated to coloring his character as a sort of mercenary for hire. This characterization of him as a man without morals is very important, as his quest for The Nine Gates (and I'm not giving anything away if you know Polanski) will lead him to both its author, Lucifer, and some very important deliberations about his soul. The book The Nine Gates, if read by the right person, in the right way, can conjure up the devil and send the conjurer to the devil's side. Langella's character, all greed, cash, and ambition, wants to be this man. So do some others. By the end, once he's learned what he can gain, so does Dean Corso.
But everything goes to hell, so to speak, fairly quickly, and the plot meanders and stalls. I kept hoping someone, anyone, would step in and send the movie somewhere, turn it up a notch, or even change directions. But no one does. Polanski can't keep away from his same old semi- fantastical and autobiographical mistakes. Sex with mystical beings occurs twice. The mystical beings are, no surprise, females. Rarely, here, does a woman get to be a woman. Two of the three main female characters in the movie are witchy (or something worse) and Depp has peremptory sex with both of them, one time (with the Olin character) for blackmail purposes and one time (with Emmanuelle Seigner's character The Girl) for much higher stakes. The Baroness, played by Barbara Jefford, is the only main female character with any lines to speak of, and with any human characteristics at all. It is no mistake that she's confined to a wheelchair and eventually murdered (by unseen forces) in a horribly goofy way that, at least for me, turned a run of the mill supernatural horror movie into farce and signaled the end of my serious viewing.
Does an inherent sexism make for a bad movie? No. Not in my opionion. What makes The Ninth Gate bad is the seeemingly exhausted imagination behind it. If The Ninth Gate is better than Arnold Schwarzennegger's End of Days, another flick about holding hands with the devil, it is because of two reasons: 1. The Ninth Gate is a big, supernatural thriller unconcerned with traditional views of right and wrong. Hell is pictured, by the end, as a desirable goal, and it becomes clear that the devil isn't very interested in the rich and ambitious: he (or she) would rather take a regular Joe (or Johnny) any day. This lack of a traditional moral compass gives The Ninth Gate a freedom to revel in the noir-dom that it does, and allows the key main character to exist. 2. Depp does do an amazing job as Dean Corso, especially if you consider how difficult his job: he needs to be at once our everyman, the desired demon vessel, the pair of eyes we see the story and react through; and, therefore, we have to identify with him, even though Corso (and this is the second part of the job) rarely seems likable, seems in fact (toward the end at least) to be something worse than that--self-involved, vacant, and a lot like us. But Johnny Depp does seem likable, and is therefore able to allow us entry to a story about moral bankruptcy and spiritual deceit. If for no other reason, see this movie for another fine character performance from one of our best clutch actors...
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