Ending of `Gate' leaves its audience behind
By MATT NANIA
Assistant Scene Editor
When one looks at the early career of director Roman Polanski, they are likely to be struck with awe. This is, after all, the man who gave us two of cinema's classics: "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown."
In later years, though, his work has been competent, but not quite as spectacular. With "The Ninth Gate," Polanski shows us that he's still got his directing chops — to some extent.
This is a supremely intelligent movie, which, despite its languid quality, draws its audience into a sinister world of demonic lore. With a very absorbing opening credit sequence, the film moves nicely at first, weaving an eerie, gothic fabric around its characters. Sadly, its veiled ending nearly ruins the film completely.
The story introduces the audience to Dean Corso (Johnny Depp), an unscrupulous rare book expert who will do almost anything to procure rare books for resale. Corso is contracted by one of his prestigious clients, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella in creepy camp glory), to authenticate a volume of "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows," a satanic tome rumored to conjure the Dark Lord himself.
Traveling from New York City to Portugal and France, Corso comes across two alternate versions of the book, each containing new secrets for unlocking the key to summon Satan.
Soon the owners of these other copies are murdered and Corso finds himself caught up in a labyrinth of deception and danger that includes being hunted by the widow (Lena Olin) of the book's original owner and being followed by a mysterious woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) with supernatural powers.
"The Ninth Gate" is extremely well crafted. Adapting the film from the novel "El Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez Reverte, Polanski produces an effectively dark and otherworldly atmosphere without resorting to trite shadows-and-fog effects. Polanski's strengths as an auteur — his dry wit, Hitchcock-ian camera movement, striking visual imagery and an engrossing, brooding narrative — are all on display here.
The movie deals heavily with the occult, yet Polanski never once stoops to cheap theatrics as were used in such films as "End of Days" and "Stigmata." There are no monsters coming out of the depths of hell or supernatural beings casting deadly spells. Polanski keeps everything in the low-key style of a classic film-noir who-done-it.
And, despite a few slow spots, the pacing of the story is nearly perfect. A mystery centered on books should unfold at a tempo different from the pell-mell acceleration of today's thriller.
Depp's performance is solid as usual, capturing a man driven by a force he can't control. Nothing seems impossible for Depp as an actor. He can lend himself to a filmmaker's most fantastical ("Sleepy Hollow") or poetic ("Dead Man") conceptions and turn into the embodiment of those stories, anchoring them to earth. From the first scene, as he cons a greedy bourgeois couple out of a book collection, Depp is right in tune with Polanski's dry malice.
It remains, however, that these elements aren't enough to salvage a film that teases its audience for two hours only to thumb its nose at them in the end. Surely, after such a mysterious journey, the least one can hope for is some sort of tangible pay-off.
Since "The Ninth Gate" plays like a marginally entertaining detective story, the overall enjoyment of watching the film would have been greatly heightened had it not left so many questions unanswered. Why did the original owner of the book hang himself? Who is killing whom? Who is the mysterious woman? What is the Ninth Gate?
For all its seemingly careful plotting and Polanski's eye for quirky detail, the film's ultimate revelation seems too much like an afterthought, making the movie a lengthy joke without a clear punchline.
--3 out of 5 shamrocks
All Scene Stories for Thursday, March 30, 2000
