The Ninth Gate

Johnny Depp (Don Juan DeMarco) is Corso, a book expert and detective, and he gets hired by Balkan (Frank Langella (Junior)).  Balkan has a book called The Nine Gates to the Kingdom of Shadows and he wants Corso to authenticate it for him by comparing it to the other two known copies.  Corso goes to Europe to check it out but at almost every turn someone’s trying to kill him and/or steal Balkan’s copy of The Nine Gates.  The book is supposed to have been co-written in 1666 by Satan so people go a little nutty for it wanting to worship it and all.

When this came out in 1999 I was real hot to trot on it.  I liked the mystery of the whole thing and how seriously this movie treated the Devil and how to conjure him up.  I also liked the Corso character because he’s a real scoundrel and will scheme his way into getting what he wants.  There are a bunch of good characters that you don’t know much about but you do know that they’re up to no good and that lends to the sense of danger.

However, upon my revisit to this film the other day I found that it wasn’t quite as good as I remembered it.  The biggest problem is that it drags at times and that’s because it becomes kind of redundant.  You see Corso finds out that all three copies of the book are authentic but there are differences in the engravings.  Each book has nine which means there are twenty seven in all.  But some are signed by the “official” author of the book, Aristide Torchia, and some are signed LCF as in Lucifer.  So Corso goes through the process of examining each Nine Gates book three times.  By the time we get to the third one we already know what he’s going to find so there isn’t much surprise or suspense.  Corso also gets jumped several times by a couple that’s trying to steal Balkan’s copy of the book but those scenes are never filled with enough danger.  Each time he makes it out relatively unscathed so you know how each encounter is going to end.  So because of the problem of redundancy the movie feels longer than it needed to be.

But I don’t want you to think that there isn’t good stuff here.  Probably the coolest thing about this picture is the film noir feel it has.  There are classic trademarks like Corso is acting like a detective on a case, he’s not well respected and a miscreant but damn it he’s one helluva book expert guy, he constantly drinks and smokes (there’s one scene where we almost see him eat something but he’s just chewing the last bite as we cut to him) and the audience is just as much in the dark as Corso is, not knowing what’s what until the very end.  I also like that the whole thing is from Corso’s perspective so we have no idea what other characters are up to unless Corso is in the same room with them.  This is a crucial aspect of the picture too.  It’s because we don’t know what’s going on totally with other characters that make everything so cryptic.  For instance there’s one part where Corso gets knocked out and as a result the screen goes black.  We wake up when Corso wakes up and to a nasty sight of the room on fire.  We have no idea who started it or why. 

After watching it this time I think The Ninth Gate is kind of similar to Eyes Wide Shut.  Not necessarily in story or even so much with the characters but with the overall feel.  Both feel like a dream.  Like the worlds in these movies are a little off.  The stories don’t really go from bad to worse but rather laterally.  In Eyes Wide Shut Tom Cruise sneaks into some fucked up orgy party and it didn’t seem like Cruise was in a normal part of his life before that (the OD’ed hooker scene for instance) but things don’t get better or crazier.  They just stay in this really weird space.  In The Ninth Gate Corso finds his friend and business partner murdered in the beginning of the film and he keeps running into other corpses with a constant threat of being the next one.  So things seem pretty weird from the start and stay that way without really getting better or worse.  His situation is always bad.  And I guess there are a couple of other similarities that these two movies share like both involve sneaking into a mansion late at night to witness some sort of cult gathering, the whole thing is told from the view of our main character, things are left fairly ambiguous leaving the audience to figure most things out for themselves and the soundtracks are awesome that contain both haunting and playful themes.  And I mean all of these comparisons as compliments.  I love Eyes Wide Shut and it’s strange to come across another movie that kinda feels like it.

Roman Polanski is such a good director and this is no exception as to how well he can put a film together.  This could have been his “other Rosemary’s Baby”.  Both are about the Devil and cults ‘n shit. And both are barely horror movies involving more atmosphere and assumptions rather than mass killings or gore.  But there are a couple of things that hold this one back from being really great.  And it’s a shame because you can see the potential that this movie had of being a classic.  I guess a good way to describe it is a cross between Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby but at the same time not being as good as either of those. 

It’s hard to recommend this one because I think most people will find it too slow (it is about books after all).  I’m split on this one.  The good stuff is really well done but it can’t keep a good pace going.  If you’re a Roman Polanski fan then you really should check this out.  Other than that I guess it’s worth seeing if you’re looking for a different type of horror film.  You know, like a horror noir.