The devil sure is having a hell of a time at the movies lately. Recent Satan cinema includes Angel Heart, The Devil’s Advocate, Stigmata, End of Days and the re-issue of The Exorcist—not to mention Battlefield Earth, which was about as close to the pit of everlasting stench and fire as most viewers want to come.
And now, another entry in the horns-and-pitchfork race, comes to us from the very man who spawned the devil’s-spawn wave more than three decades ago: Roman Polanski. Unfortunately, The Ninth Gate is no Rosemary’s Baby.
In fact, there’s some question as to whether or not ol' Beelzebub makes an actual appearance here (hint: look in a certain character’s eyes during a climactic sex scene). No, brothers and sisters of the Cineplex Church, there’s nothing as downright sinister as that hallucinatory appearance of Lucifer during Rosemary’s rape scene. Nope, The Ninth Gate is one helluva dull movie.
The story—adapted by Polanski, John Brownjohn and Enrique Urbizu from the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte—starts off with what seems to be an interesting premise: a rare-book dealer is hired by a mysterious collector to find the only other two copies of his rare book in existence. The book is called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, and the collector wants to authenticate his copy of this 17th-century occult work, said to have been written by the devil. And if all three copies are brought together, then—hold onto your rosary beads!—the devil himself will rise, walk the earth and smite those Hollywood executives who come up with such hokum.
Okay, I made up that last part…but a guy can dream, can’t he?
I was willing to give The Ninth Gate half a chance—especially since Polanski was at the helm and Johnny Depp, as the investigative book dealer Corso, was getting the chance to play another bookish fellow (see last year’s Sleepy Hollow). For a while, the movie is certainly intriguing. Even though it’s short on action in the “bombs, bullets and babes” sense of the word, I enjoyed watching an antiquities detective go about his work. Corso is the kind of guy who can spot a forged book just by listening to the sound of riffling pages. As he tracks the editions of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows from New York to Madrid to Paris, the mystery deepens.
But then, somewhere along the line, it deadens.
The dialogue becomes increasingly labyrinthine and dull and we soon realize that there’s not going to be a big payoff—no spectacular entrances by the Cloven-Hoofed One, no special-effects fire and brimstone. Just a guy surrounded by stacks of dusty books.
Then, just as we think we’ve stifled more than our fair share of yawns, the movie turns plain silly—full of midnight gatherings of robed, chanting devil’s disciples (shades of Eyes Wide Shut) and gothic horror hogwash straight out of those Hammer films of the 1960s.
Polanski lets it all melt into an apocalyptic puddle in the end…much like the course of the once-great director’s career. I’m of the opinion Polanski reached his peak with 1979’s Tess and has been steadily losing his touch since. The Ninth Gate is even worse than his last outing as a director, 1994’s Death and the Maiden which starred Sigourney Weaver as a political activist with repressed memories. The creative spark that made Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and Tess such masterpieces has been snuffed out.
The one thing giving a little breath of life to The Ninth Gate is Johnny Depp. One of our most undervalued “character” actors, Depp has a career pattern of being the best part of bad movies (except in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where the fates collided and he was as subpar as the material). Here, he plays a rumpled detective straight out of film noir, chain-smoking and wearing the same clothes throughout. His voice has a rough crack to it, as if Corso had spent a lifetime inhaling book dust. Depp brings much-needed depth to the movie and he’s interesting to watch…until the whole proceedings start dog-paddling to the shallow end.
Eventually, even Depp’s eyes glaze over as his character starts walking through symbolic gates in a puzzling word-maze. The final scenes of The Ninth Gate are vague and confusing—I suppose they’re designed to make us “think.” Right. As in, “I think I’ll go rent The Omen instead.”
Based on a novel by Arturo Prez-Reverte THE CLUB DUMAS and coscripted by director Roman Polanski THE NINTH GATE was Polanski's first feature after a l...More at Family Video
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