The Ninth Gate
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into this one … I’d heard mixed, mainly negative, reviews. I did notice that apart from myself and three friends there were only two other people (that I saw) in the entire cinema. But then the titles came up and I was soon engrossed. I found the plot to be a good (though not brilliant) story, if a little unadventurous and pandering to the American masses. But there were some nice twists, and enough left to my imagination not to keep me from getting pissed off. The characterisation was good, and the actors played it legit. I loved the Ceniza brothers :) As one would expect from Polanski, the movie was very nice on the visual and musical front. Some excellent camera work, good lighting (something I always look for, don’t ask me why). Although I found a few scenes off-putting: in one scene the smoke from a cigarette was (to my eye) obtrusively obvious CGI. In fact I noticed a fair bit of CGI, but on the whole it was unobtrusive and legitimate. In another the camera is handheld and follows Depp into a room; I found the jerkiness quite annoying relative to the nice tracking and panning work in other scenes. Oh yes, one final gripe: The sex scene at the end. Where the hell did that come from? OK — I can just kinda handle Depp and Seigner getting it on plot-wise, and I can handle a screen full of Seigner’s tits any time, but I was completely offput by this scene. It came out of nowhere and seemed to have little significance to the ongoing climax of the plot. Hmmm, I’m descending into dangerous double entendre territory here. Anyway, it just seems to me that the producers looked over the film and said, “Roman, this is nice but it doesn’t have enough sex or nudity. We didn’t see any tits in the sex scene at the start. In fact we didn’t see anything in that scene. Give us more tits. More sex.” So Polanski said, “Hmmm … OK … I suppose we can tack in another sex scene here at the end. Where did that assistant director go …”
OK, enough is enough.
All in all I’m giving this one three and a half skulls. It’s nowhere near as bad as some would have you believe.
Matt Lowry
