"Nine"

Believe me, no one was more surprised than myself not to have hated this movie. Consider what it doesn't have going for it. Its director, Rob Marshall, was behind two pictures I found absolutely awful: the puerile, gigglingly amoral, fake-cynical, know-something-ish "razzle dazzle" fest Chicago, and the bloated, overreaching snoozefest Memoirs of a Geisha. This is the guy who's going to film a musical based on Fellini's 8 1/2, then. I become a less and less religious man about such matters year after year; nonetheless, with this component the sulphurous stench of close-to-the-source-of-all-evil blasphemy definitely attached itself to this project. Also, its cast contains the human representative of all that is filthily vulgar and mediocre on this earth. No, not Ricky Tognazzi, you dolt. Fergie, the incontinent female member of that hippity-hop combo Bush's Barbecue Beans, or whatever the hell they're called. Her. (And by the way, get off my lawn.)

So there was that, and likely more, but you get the idea. So I was indeed kind of taken aback to find myself not only not seething with hatred watching an early screening of the picture, but actually mostly enjoying myself. 

It certainly helps that, for what would appear to be the very first time, Marshall understands his place, and approaches both of the film's source materials (the stage play and the Fellini film) from a perspective you wouldn't want to call modest, but is at least reasonable. Which is to say, Nine never tries to be a Fellini film, or even emulate a Fellini film. Rather, it plays out as a homage, not only to Fellini but to modes of existence and culture that we attach, for better or worse, to the period in the early '60s or thereabouts wherein the ethos of a handful of Fellini films defined "la dolce vita." A lot of the time Nine looks like an expensive fashion magazine photo layout inspired by Fellini. And I don't think that's a bad thing in and of itself. (And there are quite a few people who'll insist that a good deal of actual Fellini, starting with Juliet of the Spirits, looks like a Fellini-inspired fashion layout. But that's beside the point here.)

In any event, the breezier perspective more or less disposed of the sacrilege concern right off the bat. Another salutary aspect of the film is its briskness—it's barely an hour and fifty minutes long. (I know, that was true of Chicago, too. But Chicago felt like forever. Although I admit that could have had something to do with the fact that I had to sit with my thumb up my ass in the screening room for forty damn minutes while the publicists dutifully waited for the one other attendee, Bonnie "I Fought The Law" Fuller, to show up.) Screenwriters Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella are both sharp guys, and I don't know to what extent they alternated between the stage play's book and 8 1/2 itself in adapting the thing, but they came up with a nice modular structure in which director Guido's inability to conceive his next picture is a kind of frame story within which his relationships with various other characters, mostly women of course, are explored in discrete scenes. Tying it all together visually is the gigantic set he's constructed on Cinecitta, which he hasn't the faintest idea of what to do with.   And so these various women...Guido's feverish mistress (Penelope Cruz), long-suffering wife (Marion Cotillard), no-nonsense costume designer (Dame Judi Dench), quasi-groupie "journalist" (Kate Hudson), cinematic muse (Nicole Kidman), fondly-recalled-prostitute-from-misspent youth (Fergie), and, finally, Guido's mother (Sophia Loren!) all turn up, both as they are and as they exist in Guido's imagination. And they do their all-singing, all-dancing numbers, wham, and then step aside to embroider the film's periphery until the climax pulls everything together. It's quite efficient and energetic and makes you not mind quite so much that the songs themselves are pretty forgettable if not sometimes worse. (Hudson's number, a written-for-the-film ditty about Guido's "Cinema Italiano," is particularly cringe worthy, but the fact that it's sung by a character who actually would come up with something so precisely dumb helps it work.)

As for the women, Cruz is very hot and very funny, Cotillard attractive and mildly affecting (although it took me about 20 minutes to realize she wasn't Rachel Weisz),   Dench reliably droll, Hudson maybe a little too convincing as an unattractive character in an attractive package. It goes without saying that Kidman's no Claudia Cardinale, and while she's both game and well-lit, she really was the only woman who came off as kind of a dud. Fergie is able to split the difference between earth mother (or should that be swamp thing?) and skink in her brief turn, and Sophia Loren is Sophia Loren. As for Daniel Day Lewis' Guido, well, he's no Daniel Plainview or Bill the Butcher. It's interesting to watch this acting virtuoso manage what had to have been his least demanding role he's had since, oh, I don't know, Stars and Bars (which shouldn't be taken as a knock on Stars and Bars, by the way). There's a certain knowing irony to the work here, an acknowledgement that he's on something of a well-paying busman's holiday. When his Guido has his sunglasses on and he nods his head and makes that half-grimace/half-grin, there's this acknowledgement that he knows that you know that they know that you know he's playing you/them and so on. It's fun.

And then, of course, there is, as the illustrations here testify, what SCTV's Edith Prickley would call the "chicks in their underwear" factor, and I have to admit, for this particular viewer it worked a treat. On another random note, I was amused that Kate Hudson's rather vile "journalist" is introduced as a writer for Vogue. Between her and Iron Man's Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb), who was suppoesdly from Vanity Fair, you'd think Hollywood was under the impression that all the editorial departments at Condé Nast were staffed exclusively by attractive blondes of shaky moral character who think nothing of sleeping with their profile subjects. You'd think they'd never gotten a load of James Wolcott, or Christopher Hitchens. I know for a fact they know what John Connolly looks like! And as a matter of fact, the most notorious writer-sleeping-with-a-profile subject anecdote I know of didn't even occur at a Condé Nast publication, but rather at...I can say no more. So well-known is this tale among media insiders that I assumed it had gone public long ago, but a Google search disabused me of that notion. Sorry, inquiring minds. Anyway, if I was Si Newhouse I'd be a little peeved.

Also incidentally, I see that my own take on the film runs directly counter to that of David Thomson, whose Guardian review of it is a half-eulogy for his friend Minghella, and who calls Nine "very poignant [and] fragile," a "very moving film," and then sniffs (it wouldn't be a Thomson review if he didn't sniff), "I'm not sure if the public will take it to their hearts." I'm sorry that Thomson lost a friend, but as far as this film is concerned, I'd really like to know what he was smoking. 
 

Comments

[Zach]

You had me at "Fergie...Bush's Barbecue Beans". Hilarious. This is why some people are born to snark, Glenn...Embrace it!

I'm glad you got past the sacrilege factor - something I seriously doubt I'll be able to do. The trailer for this flick is just so abominably lame: "Hot (in a physical and cultural way!) chicks in their skivvies - 1960's Italian style! Serious Actor shrugging and brooding and wearing Wayfarers! Okay-not-bad musical numbers! We know you youngins don't really know what the hell all this means, but just look at all this skin! And the sunglasses - those are hip again, right?"

[Michael Adams]

Assuming the thumb business was hyperbole, Glenn, what do you do while waiting for prima donnas to show up at screenings?

[Glenn Kenny]

Usually I've got a book and/or an iPod, or else I just seethe and try to guess the identity of the offender. Who invariably, whenever he or she shows up, makes it abundantly clear that whatever inconvenience he or she has caused you, he or she doesn't give ten flying fucks. And that's why I love mankind.

[Peter Nellhaus]

Do you think "Nine" might have been a better film had Antonio Banderas been given the opportunity to recreate his Broadway performance?

[Glenn Kenny]

Not necessarily, Peter. Banderas is more of a natural "showman" than Day-Lewis is, and a better singer in a walk, but I'm not sure he would have made the film better...or, more to the point, if I would have liked the film better had he been in it. Given how I bristle at the stagey razzle-dazzle of "Chicago," I suspect I might have liked it less, if you follow me. By which, by the way, I intend no disrespect to either Banderas or "Chicago"'s Richard Gere.

[Tom Russell]

I thought Gere was terrific in Chicago-- he is, in point of fact, one of my favourite actors/screen presences-- but the movie itself was shite. What bugged me the most was the constant cutting-- something which seems to be a prerequisite for musicals today (cf. Moulin Rouge!, Dancer in the Dark). I know the old Fred Astaire advice that you should shoot the dance number in one take and show the performer from tip to toe is by now a cliche, but darn it, it worked. This fast rhythmic cutting junk simply doesn't.

[preston]

Really enjoyed this piece! Always love to read good writers being pleasantly surprised over preconceptions. I generally share your views on Marshall's previous work but this one sounds like it might be interesting.

Incidentally, after skimming quickly the first time I thought, 'what does Glenn have against Ricky Tognazzi?' I have actually met Ricky Tognazzi and found him to be a warm, well-mannered gentleman who was a fine conversationalist...

A more thoughtful second reading revealed that it was nothing.

Sincerely,
Dolt

[jim emerson]

Are we to believe that the character who sings of "that Guido neo-realism" (racist! er, nationalist!) thinks Guido/Fellini's style could properly be labeled neo-realistic at the time of, say, "La Dolce Vita" and "8 1/2"?

[lazarus]

Tom, Bob Fosse was able to break free of that Astaire advice and still manage to honor the work of his performers while giving the material a cinematic makeover. The problem is that Marshall, Luhrmann, and others have taken that style to an unfortunate extreme. There is a middle ground, but it may take someone with a higher cinema I.Q. Scorsese and Coppola, in their two big musical flops (New York New York and One From The Heart) gave the old studio method a little twist and at least proved they know how to shoot the stuff.

The other problem is that there used to be successful stage performers who could also act for the camera. Now they're just casting movie stars with the knowledge they can cut around them (Renee Zellweger). And the ones who have proven themselves previously on the stage (Ewan McGregor & Hugh Jackman to name two) haven't been given the chance to do it on film, Catherine Zeta Jones notwithstanding. I'd still love to see McGregor reprise his successful Sky Masterson turn in a new Guys & Dolls adaptation for the screen.

[Tom Russell]

Your analysis is very smart, Lazarus-- and you're absolutely right about Fosse. That was a guy who knew how to razzle-dazzle without making it just razzle-dazzle. ALL THAT JAZZ in particular remains a masterpiece of style, substance, and performance.

And there is, sadly and indeed, a dearth of successful/versatile stag performers today.

[BLH]

What about Sasha Grey?

[Tom Russell]

(face-palms)

Stage. Stage performers. I meant stage per... oh, never mind.

[Sean]

Am I the only one that thinks Daniel Day Lewis kinda looks like Jean-Luc Godard in this?

[Tom Russell]

Sean-- I totally see it.

[Jeff McMahon]

My initial reaction is that while I love Day-Lewis, seeing him shambling around and mugging as a faux-Mastroianni already makes me want to grit my teeth.

I don't think much of Chicago, but I did like Zeta-Jones in it and would say she actually deserved her Oscar.

[Dee Dee Shackelford]

Sorry, but Daniel Day-Lewis just doesn't have enough sex appeal to convince me that so many women would be chasing him! Instead of studying Italian for the role, he should have made a trip to Italy and observed Italian men, from newsboys, to shoe salesmen to opera singers to see that special quality they have. Having seen Antonio Banderas on stage in "Nine" I think it was a great mistake not to have cast him in the Guido role. Surely Rob Marshall is a good enough director to have brought out what he wanted for the part, and no question that Antonio is a superb actor who could have made the role much more effective!

[Fuzzy Bastarrd]

@ Sean: More like Elvis Costello.

[SeanAx]

@Sean and Fuzzy Bastard - I was thinking more along the lines of Daniel Day-Lewis channeling Michel Piccoli of "Le Mepris" (it's all in the hat) but Godard works for me.