The Ninth Gate ***
Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Bromborough)
Released in the UK by UIP on June 2, 2000; certificate 15; 133 minutes;
countries of origin France/Spain/USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Roman Polanski; produced by Mark Allan, Antonio Cardenal, Inaki
Nunez, Roman Polanski, Alain Vannier.
Written by John Brownjohn, Roman Polanski, Enrique Urbizu; based on the novel
"El Club Dumas" by Aturo Pérez-Reverte.
Photographed by Darius Kondjhi; edited by Hervé de Luze.
CAST.....
Johnny Depp..... Dean Corso
Emmanuelle Seigner..... The Girl
Frank Langella..... Boris Balkan
Lena Olin..... Liana Telfer
Barbara Jefford..... Baroness Kessler
Jack Taylor..... Victor Fargas
James Russo..... Bernie
Chandeliers are grand, ornate and thoroughly ridiculous, and sometimes fall
down on people. Roman Polanski's "The Ninth Gate" is like that -- a
supernatural thriller and detective movie that begins by playing tricks with
its genre and ends up playing one on the audience. It deliberately leaves us
unsatisfied, but is silly and goofy and a whole lot of fun.
Johnny Depp stars as Dean Corso, a rare book dealer hired by a strange
collector (Frank Langella) to track down a book entitled "The Nine Gates of
the Kingdom of Shadows". Legend has it that its illustrations, when used in
satanic ritual, can summon up Lucifer himself. Corso, in trying to find it,
runs into one strange person after another, and we are reminded of such films
as "The Big Sleep" and "Angel Heart", although "The Ninth Gate" is goofier,
and the structure and details of the plot make it extremely predictable.
Until, that is, the last act, when the fire-and-brimstone conclusion we've
been expecting doesn't happen, and there is a confusing final shot that
leaves us wondering whether Corso has lost power over his soul, sold it, or
gone to battle.
Polanski, the director, is manipulating us. He knows how to make a serious
detective movie ("Chinatown"), tale of witchcraft ("Macbeth"), or movie about
the Devil ("Rosemary's Baby") -- but he's decided to forget about that and
have a little fun. The early scenes involve us with a subtle, odd sense of
humour: they undermine the seriousness of the plot by focusing on ridiculous
images like a light fixture a guy hung himself on; and by letting Depp skulk
through the movie with an eyebrow raised, as he did in "Sleepy Hollow". Then
the anti-climactic nature of the ending reveals that Polanski's chuckles
extend to us, because he's toying with us just as surely as he is with the
film noir genre. Odd, but not uninteresting.
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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