The Ninth Gate

Ever seen the movie The Wild Goose Chase? No? Okay. Well, perhaps you've heard of it under it's more contemporary name, The Ninth Gate?
Yes, I see I've struck a chord. I have now compared an old aphorism to a movie starring Johnny Depp which concerns a book that opens a passage to Hell. You may be wondering why.
I'll tell you why. (I bet you thought I wouldn't) This movie contains about two hours of footage of a guy running after rare books when he is in fact not necessary to the movement of the plot at all. Well, that's not exactly true, since the plot is pretty much Johnny Depp, as Dean Corso, asking the question "What is going on?" again and again. Ostensibly, he's figuring out a mystery for his mysterious employer Boris Balkan, but he soon suspects that Balkan knows more than he is letting on. The truth is, though, that for the actual plot, involving the devil, selling one's soul, and more power than a person can fit on the head of a pin, Corso is really unnecessary, except at the ending where his finale is tagged on like a badly pinned donkey tail.
I really wanted to like this movie. The main reason, actually the only reason, being that Johnny Depp was in it. I've recently become a big fan because of his acting skills and because of the movies he chooses to act in, which are always eccentric and usually somewhat deeper than the normal Hollywood fare. Sort of like medieval hermits. Ed Wood is amazing and hilarious, as well as depressing. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he's a crazy reporter (balding, by the way) who experiences Sin City through cocaine colored glasses. And in Sleepy Hollow Depp plays a nervous, repressed constable (re: murder detective) who is faced with the reality of the supernatural. Alone, he is a marvel to watch on the big screen.
Okay, I'll stop there. Yes, I think Johnny Depp is a major acting talent, but this review isn't about him. Though if it was there'd be a thumbs up at the bottom, or at least four and a half stars.
So, yes, in The Ninth Gate Depp's acting is amazing, and if the movie was simply a character study of a corrupt book dealer who'll do anything for money it would be well worth your time. As it is, Dean Corso only shines as the focus for the first thirty minutes or so of the movie, and then the film quickly settles in to the traditional mystery/horror formula. You know, where the main character is on a quest for something, he's not exactly sure what, for some reason that he's never told, and eventually discovers he's part of a larger, more intricate plan, one that he's now driven to understand in order to make sense of what has happened to his life.
This is also a film by Roman Polanski, and as such I was expecting all the style and panache that big name directors usually bring to their works. Although, I have to admit, I've never seen a Polanski film, only heard of the praise for them, such as that for 1994's Death and the Maiden. (For those who keep track of such things, Polanski has also directed a movie called The Fearless Vampire Hunters. For those of you who are interested in useless trivia, two of the actors in this film were involved with Conan the Barbarian and one, Frank Langella, was the voice of He-Man's Skeletor.)
The script (by John Brownjohn) portrays Corso as an anti-Indiana Jones, a mercenary for hire whose specialty is retrieving rare books. By any means necessary. At least this is the impression the script, through the character of Boris Balkan, tries to give us. Admittedly, the opening scene is a very well-done exercise in reversal, tossing the audience's expectation on its head, but the utter ruthlessness that is attributed to Corso doesn't stick. Part of this failure is due to the script's need to show change in Corso without providing enough basis for the character he is changing from. In the film Corso is repeatedly faced with actions and events that test his stated amoral stance, but his questioning of the morality of what is going on is not sufficiently supported by the character to which we are introduced. Since the movie is based on a novel (El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte) I'm convinced that a lot of these problems are due to compressing a 300 or so page study of morality and evil into a two-hour screenplay.
At this point I'd like to go into the other inanities of the script. You may want to skip this paragraph if you're planning to see the movie. Don't worry, you can always come back later. (Waiting...) Okay, for those who stayed. Inanity 1: the unexplained nature of Corso's bodyguard. (I'm not going to mention the stupid, idiotic, lame scenes of her flying, of which there are thankfully only two (Okay, so I mentioned them. Sue me (Better yet, sue Roman Polanski))) Who she is working for is not as important as answering the question of why she is used simply as a deus ex machina, the authorial hand moving the plot along. Inanity 2: the unexplained reason why Balkan, the obviously evil villain, hires Corso to do his dirty work when it is shown very early in the movie that he is capable and willing to do everything himself. Which he subsequently does. And inanity 3: there is the begging question as to what actually the ninth gate leads to and why anyone would want to go through it in the first place. Or, more to the point, why Corso would want to. This sudden desire of his at the end of the movie has no basis in his actions or attitude up until that point and, simply, makes no sense. Unless it was the sex with the girl that did it. Damn women. (Full disclosure: the website for The Ninth Gate answers all these questions and more, except for the most important one: Why aren't these answers in the filking movie itself?)
Right now you may be thinking that I didn't enjoy the movie at all, that it was a torturous experience akin to, say, having slivers of bamboo jammed under my fingernails. But this isn't true. I enjoyed it, to a degree, and not only because of Johnny Depp, and the beautiful girl (The Girl, in the credits) who follows him around. Polanski does a good job of creating atmosphere, engendering mystery and suspicion into every scene, and his directing is very good at parts. There is some impressive and subtle foreshadowing that goes on in the early part of the movie, enough so that the entire movie, by the end, pretends to make sense and cohere, but really doesn't. The costuming, the sets, the scenery: all are very nice, but they're just not a substitute for good, solid film making. They are Equal or Sweet-n-low when all I want is sugar. Pure, good, tasty sugar with no chance of causing cancer in lab rats, or innocent (re)viewers.

Related Links: The 9th Gate official website

-Andrew Kozma