The Ninth Gate [DVD] [2000]

I have never written a review before and doubt I will again, but there is so much misunderstanding about this masterpiece that I feel compelled to add my praise and insights.
This is the only film I have ever seen that rivals the complexity of a classic novel.
When first I saw it I was, like most people, rather confused - especially by the ending. It seemed a terrible anticlimax. However my respect for both Depp's choice of script and Polanski as a great film maker left me uneasy in my disappointment; I felt it was far more likely that it was my interpretation and understanding rather than their portrayal that was found wanting. I also had a gnawing sense of having missed something subtle but vitally important. I mulled over the film for a couple of days and slowly started to understand. I then went back and watched it again; the second viewing seemed to confirm my gradual revelation. I watched it again, pad and pen in hand taking notes, much as I did working through the various texts of my University literature days. It became clear.

The end is not vague, it is not an anti-climax at all; it is in fact a great achievement. Rarely in the best literature one encounters a sudden twist or change or revelation that forces one to reinterpret everything in the novel to that point; this is the best example of this that I have seen on film.

Not to give it away, but the film seems to portray a pursuit to obtain knowledge of the occult steps that lead to passage through the Ninth Gate and the immortality which that entails. When Depp's character finally acquires this knowledge, we expect to watch him fulfil the steps one by one until this passage to immortality is achieved. But in an apparent and disjointed anticlimax Depp is suddenly shown passing through the Ninth Gate. It is then that we must reinterpret the entire film in this light.

It is only on reflection that we understand that the film has not been a pursuit at all; we realise, simultaneously with Depp's character, that in his pursuit of the nine steps he has actually fulfilled them all bar one. The guardian demon that has accompanied him through his pursuit has actually been guiding him to fulfil the very requirements that he seeks knowledge of. When he obtains this knowledge he realises that his own journey has already taken him down the path to the entrance of the Ninth Gate itself; he is already there and done what is required to enter.

In this respect the film is one of those rare media experiences that becomes a true journey, a truer rendition of Heart of Darkness than is Apocalypse Now. And the subtlety and apparent ambiguity that many find detracting and confusing is actually integral and instrumental to this achievement.

The Ninth Gate seems to generate differences of view depending on whether or not you read the underlying novel. I enjoyed both but I would recommend any readers about to become watchers to regard this as a different story from the novel. The film is a strange mixture of fantasy, horror and a thriller. It has a core puzzle to crack (and it's a good one) and lots of good actors acting their socks off. To me its main appeal comes from the anti-hero played by Johnny Depp and the steady pace which Polanski achieves. In each country the story visits it seems to get the local culture just right.

Frank Langella's voice is, once again, dipped in dark chocolate.

Some films are the victims of audience expectations, and that's certainly true of The Ninth Gate, which saw Roman Polanski apparently return to the horror genre but with very different results and tone to Rosemary's Baby in a film that left horror fans and admirers of its source novel alike feeling shortchanged. Based on Arturo Peréz-Reverte's The Dumas Club, but throwing out its parallel story revolving around a lost chapter from The Three Musketeers that many found the book's most interesting part as well as dropping the literary allusions in general and parallels to Dumas' novel in particular, it revolves around amoral rare book dealer Johnny Depp's ill-fated attempts to authenticate a rare book for ruthless billionaire publisher Frank Langella. It seems that The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows was co-written by the Devil himself, and Langella wants to meet the author, something the book's nine engravings give instructions for - but only if interpreted in the right way and only if the book, one of only three remaining copies to survive the bonfires of Inquisition, is not a forgery. Naturally Depp's attempts to compare and decipher the volumes leave a mounting trail of dead bodies in his wake and put his life and immortal soul (if he has one) in danger as he finds himself shadowed by fatale femmes Emmanuelle Seigner's 'guardian angel,' who demonstrates her supernatural credentials with a couple of bits of wire work that seem to have crept in from another picture, and Lena Olin's devilish millionairess.

But rather than playing it all as a po-faced horror movie, Polanski chooses a more slyly mischievous and playful tone, its Satanic double-dealings more the stuff of black comedy than a black mass. Certainly it's hard to take many of the details seriously: these books are worth millions of pounds, yet no-one wears gloves to handle them, people casually flick through the pages with a drink or a cigarette in hand, even pressing down the spine to read them, ensuring that the only truly horrified members of the audience are obsessive bibliophiles. Unfortunately if you won't be scared, you're also unlikely to be thrilled as it winds down from the mildly quirky into the increasingly routine and it's let down badly, as are pretty much all let's-go-to-Hell movies, by the is-that-all? ending, which leaves you wondering if this journey down the left handed path was really necessary. Still, there's a delightful cameo from Jose Lopez Rodero, the film's production manager and the assistant director of many shot-in-Spain epics such as El Cid, King of Kings, Papillon and Patton, as eccentric twin Spanish book dealers (one dubbed by Polanski himself) and a couple of workmen, and there are a few nice little bits of business along the way that help mitigate the inevitable first-time disappointment on a second viewing.

The DVD extras are a lot less impressive than they sound, though: a very short trailer, a two-minute featurette, a gallery of the satanic engravings and a not terribly interesting commentary from Polanski, though Wojciech Kilar's fine score, mixing the portentous dread of his work for Bram Stoker's Dracula with a wry comic theme, gets an isolated track of its own.