All The Substance Of An Ash

The Ninth Gate (2000) – An ethically challenged bookseller slips into an affair involving a mysterious young woman and three copies of a book whose author might be Satan himself. The question of whom he can trust is asked again and again. The answers never stay the same.

Directed by Roman Polanski

Starring Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Emmanuelle Seigner, Lina Olin, Barbara Jeffers

Why I Liked It – It never fulfills its promise, but it’s just enough.

It’s clear that Polanski’s intention was to create a suspenseful and scary movie. Sadly, it never happens. He can create beautiful scenes on the big screen, but this movie leaves me with doubts about his ability to create and sustain suspense. There’s an utter failure to create much in the way of horror either.

Dean Corso (Depp) has an expert’s eye for valuable antique books. He also has no compunction about doing what is needed to skim the best off for himself. When the elite collector Boris Belkin (Langella) offers him a blank check to compare two copies of a notorious book to the one in Belkin’s library, he can’t pass up the chance. His meetings with the widow of the man who sold the copy to Belkin, a collector who has sacrificed most of his wealth to maintain the core of his library, and an eccentric woman in a wheelchair will present him with a range of challenges. Ones that will cause betrayal, destruction, and death.

The biggest stumbling block for me is the dialog. The script doesn’t give the cast a lot to work with here. Langella does a fine job, and Depp struggles manfully with some wooden writing. The rest of the cast, especially Emmanuelle Seigner (Polanski’s wife), can’t make anything interesting out of the script. Given that her role as “The Girl” is central to the action, that’s a problem. What isn’t wooden tries for funny, but never gets it to land. Since I know that both Depp and Langella can handle a sly funniness, it’s especially telling when it arrives DOA.

Some folks complain about the tempo of the movie, but I can’t complain. This is supposed to be complicated with unexpected twists. You need some room to develop quality horror. It’s the perfect working space for it, but never produces in the end.

What annoyed me was the score and one specific habit of most of the characters.

The score gets raves from other reviews, but it didn’t impress me at all. In some places, making a lot of noise for no reason, then in others disappearing when it felt like it could make an addition. I shouldn’t be thinking about most scores, and when I do, it should be all “Wow”. Didn’t work for me at all.

The other thing was watching all these “antique book experts” rifling through pages with bare hands, and smoking right over top of the book. Again, if this was a joke or bit of parody, it missed the mark for me.

In the end, what do we have? An interesting concept, some beautiful moments on film, but with a decided “B Movie” feel to the whole thing. I watched the whole thing, and it will certainly work for some. For that, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

You can stream “The Ninth Gate” on The Roku Channel, Tubi, Plex, Kanopy, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube

Rating – *** Worth A Look