The Ninth Gate

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

Watching The Ninth Gate is like building a jigsaw puzzle piece by piece, only to have Mom throw it all out when you’re one piece away from finishing. Roman Polanski has concocted a pretty intriguing mystery, but someone forgot to tell him that movies need endings.

Book broker Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) makes his living locating rare volumes for insanely wealthy collectors. He’s hired by insanely wealthy Boris Balkan (Frank Langella—one step away from playing Dracula again, but more on that later) to find an ancient Satanic text. (Corso’s sort of like Indiana Jones, if he’d been a librarian instead of a archaeologist.) He goes after the book and meets a string of bizarro characters straight out of a cheesy Hammer horror film—primarily a serpentine Lena Olin (playing a shady Frenchwoman) and a strangely upbeat Emmanuelle Seigner (playing a shady Frenchwoman). It all boils down to endless shots of Depp smoking cigarettes and staring intently at something off-screen—not unlike his recent Charlie Rose interview.

The most frustrating thing about The Ninth Gate is that it’s not all bad. In fact, as pieces of the mystery begin falling into place, the film gets pretty engrossing. Then it all goes to hell, but not in the way you’re thinking. By the time Corso tracks Balkan to his castle in France, you wouldn’t be surprised if Balkan emerged wearing a cape and sporting rubber fangs (this is not helped at all by the music, which seems to be lifted from every low-budget horror film you’ve ever wasted a Sunday afternoon watching on TNT). All the buildup is discarded in favor of symbolism that’s either terribly ham-fisted (Balkan’s security code is “666,” ’cause he’s eeeee-vil) or completely confusing (Seigner’s character wears Asics gel sneakers, ’cause she’s eeeee-vil—um, we guess). It’s difficult to spoil the ending, because it makes absolutely no sense. Corso returns to the smoldering ruins of Balkans castle to discover…nothing! That’s it. Roll credits. Talk about movie blue balls. Does Corso inherit a castle? Is the Satanic text just a way for Lucifer to sell real estate? Actually, that could be it. If evil is all about property, then Donald Trump is making a whole lot more sense.

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