The Ninth Gate (1999)
Directed by Roman Polanski
A rare book dealer finds himself at the heart of a string of paranormal events when he is hired to find the last two copies of a text, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, capable of summoning the Devil.
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The still-active director's influence, however, stretches much further than his frequently truncated, only sporadically available body of work would indicate; for evidence, look no further than Roman Polanski's recent feature-length Argento homage The Ninth Gate.
In fact, it's quintessential Polanski, in the vein of "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby," though Alan Parker's "Angel Heart" may make the best analogy.
One's anticipatory mood may sour when one realizes that The Ninth Gate is essentially just a ponderous supernatural whodunit, without the freaky twists of an Angel Heart or a Sixth Sense.
Polanski delivers his story like it's Angel Heart mixed with an old Jules Dassin piece: Corso is not a completely heroic guy, but he's just decent enough to keep the audience compelled -- and once the twists start tightening and a bunch of side players get killers, I bet The Ninth Gate will have you semi-stuck to your couch, just waiting to see how it will all turn out.
After all, this is the guy who gave us Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), andChinatown (1974).
In fact, it's quintessential Polanski, in the vein of "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby," though Alan Parker's "Angel Heart" may make the best analogy.
The horror genre has been degraded for so long that having Polanski ( Repulsion , Rosemarys Baby , Chinatown ) back in charge feels like the restoration of a monarch.
Back in the days of such bona fide classics as "Repulsion" (1965), "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) and "Chinatown" (1974), or even the deliciously ludicrous "The Tenant" (1977), Mr. Polanski seemed to possess a direct pipeline to the nature of madness and evil.
Polanski, long-exiled from the United States for having sex with a minor, is a distinctive filmmaker who has made one of the queasiest supernatural films ever, Rosemary's Baby; one of the best crime thrillers ever, Chinatown; and the outstanding psychological shocker, Repulsion.
"The Ninth Gate," an alleged mystery-thriller from famed, yet controversial, director Roman Polanski (1968's "Rosemary's Baby," 1974's "Chinatown"), is a wildly overlong 133-minutes sludge through well-worn territory and predictable twists and turns, seemingly leading up to a whopper of an ending.
Roman Polanski, once a great filmmaker, directed this slack, often ludicrous adaptation of a gothic thriller by Spanish writer Arturo Perez Reverte; the material conjures memories of Polanski's droll and creepy "Rosemary's Baby" of 1968, though not to the present film's advantage.
But since he also made Rosemary's Baby, it's not like he doesn't know how.
After all, this is the guy who gave us Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), andChinatown (1974).
In fact, it's quintessential Polanski, in the vein of "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby," though Alan Parker's "Angel Heart" may make the best analogy.
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Depp and Polanski bring a film noir feel to the film; we're reminded of Bogart pretending to be a rare-book buyer in "The Big Sleep."
And that may be where the old master from "Rosemary's Baby" (even better, "Chinatown," "Tess" and "Bitter Moon") has gone wrong commercially.
After all, this is the first time the Oscar nominated director of films such as "Chinatown" and "Tess" has returned to the horror genre since 1968's critically lauded classic, "Rosemary's Baby."
Away making movies in Europe since Chinatown, he has become a director of bits and pieces (with the exception of Tess), and while the oddments are still the work of a distinctive talent, the films come across less as fully realized achievements than as squanderings.
"The Fearless Vampire Killers" and "Rosemary's Baby," for instance, were made hideous mostly through close-ups that denied you context or room to breathe.
In adapting the European slight-fright best seller "El Club Dumas," Mr. Polanski is out to cross "Rosemary's Baby" with his saucy spoof "The Fearless Vampire Killers," but this movie is about as scary as a sock-puppet re-enactment of "The Blair Witch Project," and not nearly as funny.
Benefiting from a wonderful and highly visualized look from Polanski, cinematographer Darius Khondji ("Seven," "Evita") and production designer Dean Tavoularis ("The Godfather" films, "Apocalypse Now"), as well as an effective and haunting score by composer Wojciech Kilar ("The Truman Show," "The Portrait of a Lady"), the film sets the appropriate tone and atmosphere of creepy things to come.
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Seigner (aka Mrs. Roman Polanski), whom you might recognize from Polanski's Bitter Moon and Frantic , is starting to lose her credibility as a sex goddess, I will note.
And the presence of Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner as the mysterious, ass-kicking woman who joins Corso (she's like Lara Croft thrown into the middle of Angel Heart) just makes the movie feel like a creepier version of Polanski's Frantic (also starring Seigner).
Frank Langella ("Small Soldiers," "Dracula"), playing the Christopher Lee type demonologist/book collector, is too one-dimensional to raise any doubts about his ultimate intentions, while neither Lena Olin ("Mystery Men," "Polish Wedding") nor Emmanuelle Seigner ("Nirvana," "Frantic") manage to maintain any audience interest in their characters once the story bogs down into complacency.
In the process, Polanski gets a workout in pacing and narrative convolutions he hasn't had since 1986's "Frantic."
In addition, Lena Olin (Mr. Jones) and Emmanuelle Seigner (Frantic) smolder as sexy objects of suspicion.
The dread that pervades, say, Chinatown, or even the uneven Frantic, which is almost intolerably anxiety-provoking for its first, seemingly uneventful half-hour or so, goes beyond pulpishness into richer realms of unease.
Benefiting from a wonderful and highly visualized look from Polanski, cinematographer Darius Khondji ("Seven," "Evita") and production designer Dean Tavoularis ("The Godfather" films, "Apocalypse Now"), as well as an effective and haunting score by composer Wojciech Kilar ("The Truman Show," "The Portrait of a Lady"), the film sets the appropriate tone and atmosphere of creepy things to come.