If you were a fan of Rob Marshall’s Chicago and enjoy seeing award winners like Daniel Day-Lewis step out of their element to tackle musical roles, Nine was a movie attempted for you.
While the preview promises us all the sex and energy of Chicago, what it provides is just a lot of build with no climax. Much like that of the director portrayed in the film, Marshall’s execution feels frazzled and he fails to fully execute a unified vision for Nine.
Nine is based on a musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s autobiographical film 8½ (1963). It focuses on film director Guido Contini, who faces a creative crisis and various romantic entanglements after the release of his most successful films.
While Nine was extremely successful upon its original release in the 80’s and as a revival in 2003, even the star-studded cast of Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren and Fergie do little to inspire in this film version.
The movie follows in the vein of Chicago, with the musical numbers acting as a separate reality from the live action. However, the effect doesn’t quite work here. Instead, the musical numbers seem disconnected from the story. By the end, the numbers and dialogue feel like two entirely different works, with the musical numbers encroaching on a dramatic film starring Day-Lewis as Contini.
In fact, it is Daniel Day-Lewis’s charisma that gets us through the film. Despite the lackluster song-and-dance business around him, Lewis’ immersion in Contini engages us again and again even as the singing saps our interest. Day-Lewis’s interactions with Judi Dench are also like little treasures buried inside a 110-minute star-studded musical variety show.
Nine had enormous potential but lost its way. In the end what happened, or why, isn’t really certain. All you really come away with is an appreciation for Daniel Day-Lewis — but hey, you had that already.
Too many movies with 9 in the title this year, District 9, 9, and Nine.
Good thing in a year or two we’ll only think about one of them.
Frankly, I can’t disagree more on the comment you gave. This movie is emotional sensitivite and has a true touching climax in the scene where Guido’s wife, who has always forgiving with her unfaithfull hasband, realizes that the memory of her first meeting with her hasband, the only thing that is still linking the couple togheter, was fake. The music and the scene is highly appropriate and dramatic showing the desperation of a woman that has been naked of all her feelings, hopes and dreams in love.
The film catches Guido (Daniel Day Lewis)in a period of creativity dryness in the middle of a movie making. Throughout the movie you can understand that the lack of creativity depends on the way he messed up his feelings with ambiguity and contradictory actions that lead him to loose his beloved and muse. Psicologically speaking the film is sophisticated. You can perceive that Guido replicates patterns of his childwood, caractherized by the presence of an always welcoming mother, in his adult life where the figure of his mother is indeed substituted by the inspiring presence of his forgiving wife. Guido needs to loose everything and emancipate from the figure of his mother to reborn as a new man. The subject could be extremely heavy however the form of musical to express feelings is a great way to provide rythm to the film. Daniel Day Lewis is once more fantastic. For me this movie deserves a 9 out of 10.
I agree. I felt like the preview made a lot of promises it didn’t follow through with. I was not very impressed with this movie.