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 Please visit, and encourage others to visit, the UK Critic's website at http://members.aol.com/ukcritic
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