In a strange way, the 1999 American/French/Spanish thriller The Ninth Gate he may have coined a new sub-genre, in that you can’t really pigeon-hole it as a horror movie (although there are elements involved) and you can’t really rubber stamp it as a thriller (although there are elements involved). Perhaps it would be best described as a satanic Gabriel Knight-esque point n’ click mystery feature film. Anyone who’s familiar with Sierra’s On-line games of the 90’s will instantly see similarities between the eponymous bookstore owner and Johnny Depp’s interpretation of a morally corrupted book mercenary on the search for what is, essentially, Lucifer’s version of the Bible. For others that don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, here’s the Wikipedia page.

The Ninth Gate is an adaptation of The Dumas Club, a book written by Spanish novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The main narrative of the film centres around Dean Corso (Depp), a book detective (if such a thing really exists then I’m in the wrong line of work) who is hired by shady bibliophile Boris Balkan (played by Frank Langella with Machiavellian glee) to authenticate his copy of De Umbrarum Regis Novum Portis (The Nine Doors To the Kingdom of Shadows) to verify whether his book is authentic or a forgery. Balkan has one of three original copies known in existence of the medieval text suspected to be co-authored by Lucifer, and money’s no option when it comes to finding out instructions on how to raise Satan. Personally, I’d just buy some flat pack furniture from IKEA and summon the Dark Lord by trying to decipher the incantations of the Cthulhu-like inscriptions for a Billy Bookcase, but each to their own.

“[…] you can’t really pigeon-hole [The Ninth Gate] as a horror movie […] and you can’t really rubber stamp it as a thriller…”

Johnny Depp plays Dean Corso with a world-weary, detached undertone – harking back to days of the hard-boiled detective’s of the 50’s film era, and his performance is actually quite subdued throughout the film. Newcomers to The Ninth Gate should not be expecting any Gonzo or Pirate style shenanigans here…it’s slightly in the same mood vein of his character Mort Rainey from Secret Window (2004) than any other character he’s portrayed as an anti-hero type onscreen before, but there’s a ruthlessness to Corso that went against the grain against characters that Depp had played prior to this film. We’ve seen him play villains and killers since, but in 1999, apart from Donnie Brasco (1997), the actor had chosen roles that had made the audience empathise with his character very early on and relate to the character. When we initially meet Corso, he’s ripping off a family in a swish apartment suite that own rare volumes of Don Quixote. The owner, the father of one of the family members, sits languidly by a window, unable to communicate verbally and physically due to a recent stroke. Whilst Corso silver tongues the couple into relinquishing the rare books for a pittance of the original purchase price, we see the stroke victim silently digging holes in his knees with his geriatric fingers, agitated and incensed knowing full well that he’s being ripped off, but helpless to convey this to the hapless couple.

It’s not a particularly stylised scene, but it’s one that invokes the minutiae of his character, straight out of the gate – foreshadowing the eventual decline of what lengths the book detective will go to in order to inch his way further down the rabbit hole as the movie progresses.

But it’s these little elements that make The Ninth Gate endearing to watch after twenty years. For example, the film begins with another bibliophile and owner of one of the copies of The Nine Doors To The Kingdom of Shadows, Andrew Telfer. He’s busy writing a letter in his library, dressed in a Hugh Hefner style smoking jacket, but the letter is being written with a cadence that suggests the man has a plane to catch. He’s in a hurry. The camera slowly pans through the library and we focus on a stool. We linger here for a moment and just as you’re about to ask yourself ‘why are we looking at this?’ The camera whips up to reveal a noose hanging from a chandelier.

Oh.

This style of narrative storytelling that can subvert your expectations from scene one. The same type of storytelling can be seen from the first Roman Polanski film to be screened publicly, (Two Men and a Wardrobe – 1958). We open on a stationary view of a beach. A protracted amount of time passes as we watch the waves roll in, but then two men emerge from the sea, carrying a wardrobe and fully dressed. That type of unexpected twist that is present here.

“there’s a ruthlessness to Corso that went against the grain against characters that [Johnny] Depp had played prior to this film.”

Model and Ultra Orange singer Emmanuelle Seigner, plays the ‘Girl,’ a seemingly angelic protector for Depp’s character, kicking ass and taking names in mismatched socks, but having an ethereally set of skills and questionable motives for helping Corso’s book detective. Is she a saviour or a sinner? Until the climax of the film we’re left wondering this question, but it underpins Corso‘s moral decline into accomplishing things that a normal person would probably say, ‘nah bruv, not going to do that.’

As we delve more into the plot, we’re treated to insidious conspiracies involving rich people with tattoos of archaic symbols dressed in robes and several globe-trotting locations, basking in its pulpy, moody vibe…

But…

Here’s where the Gabriel Knight reference from earlier comes into play. As we’re getting to the halfway point of the movie, things start to unravel and play like a ‘90’s point and click adventure game rather than a film. Corso has to interview two other people that own other copies of the Devil’s tome to compare and contrast with his version of the book, and it seems like in order to do that he has to go through a series of computer game like tropes in order to succeed in his quest. Just like in Gabriel Knight 3’s first major puzzle, (where to progress further you have to rent a motorcycle, using a cat and Sellotape in order to give the character a fake moustache,) In The Ninth Gate, Corso’s quest becomes almost as convoluted, with multiple interactions with characters that almost seem like a cookie cut vignette from a videogame (two Spanish twins that own an old bookshop, a Baroness in a wheelchair, an amoral femme fatale…etc.) There’s actually a point where he has to get past a guard in order to gain access to the Baroness.

The Ninth Gate is a slow burn type of movie, reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) and Solaris (1972), and like the Russian director, it doesn’t provide terror from the onset; it prefers to tighten the suspense like a finely taught leather glove around the neck. There’s subtlety created throughout that creates an uneasy atmosphere using minimal effects. Just like Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse’s breakdown to paranoia and suspicion in Rosemary’s Baby, the film knows where evil lives and allows the settings of normal everyday life to make insidious invitations with subliminal references to recognisable horror and peril.

It also seems that the film takes cues from other films of the satanic genre and pays homage in subconscious ways. In one scene, Corso leaves a Spanish bookshop and is walking along an alleyway with scaffolding when it suddenly begins to collapse around him. It could have just been me, but there was a definite vibes of The Omen (1976) at play here.

“[The Ninth Gate] doesn’t provide terror from the onset; it prefers to tightens the suspense like a finely taught leather glove around the neck.”

By the end of the film, Corso has stepped beyond the realms of normalcy and has entered a different dominion entirely. His lust and greed have taken him over, and in one scene when he beats a henchman to death with a book, ‘The Girl’ watches with an almost child-like glee, breathing heavily and uttering, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you.’ It’s almost seductive, recognising the dark appeal of the unholy and the demise of everything any catholic person has grown up on.

Does Corso find the ninth gate at the film’s ending? There’s a little ambiguity here, but I suspect the real question is: what would you be prepared to do to find the one thing that gives you meaning in your life?

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