Reviews

May contain spoilers...

"Nine Songs" is one of those rare pictures where it is evident early on that it's greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses. More of a meditation on love and loss than a plot-driven romance, it is equal parts concert film and erotica all wrapped up in an art film package. And from within that art film point of reference, one can begin to look at the movie's strengths in various ways.

Starting with the obvious, there is the graphic sex. Like other recent mainstream European films that have pushed the boundaries of acceptable visual depictions of sexuality (and to a much lesser extent American indies like the profound meditation of "The Brown Bunny"), the inclusion of explicit sex acts automatically calls up notions of pornography. The problem here is that porn is subject to very personal definitions. To my mind, porn must be designed to appeal strictly to the most prurient sensibilities in order to fulfill that definition. For this reason, I actually lump excessively and senselessly violent movies into the definition of porn. There is a huge difference between porn and erotica, though both are designed to arouse. Erotica moves beyond being mere porn by appealing to a more multidimensional response, something that "Nine Songs" does quite effectively, deliberately and consistently. Even during the explicit scenes, it moves to get into the other aspects of the sex act that exist beyond merely the contact of genitalia. That said, there will be those who still find these scenes vulgar for whatever reason, and it will be hard for them to get around the dramatic arc told through these sexual encounters.

Moving to next obvious on the list of alienating strengths, we come to the music. This movie has a fabulous soundtrack — if you like the sort of Brit Pop that "Nine Songs" revels in. Like the sex, the music also appears to have an arc that mimics the mood of the relationship, beginning all frenetic and turning blissful, etc. It plays its role well, but it is so prevalent that people who don't like the bands will find themselves disliking nearly a third of the movie that is made up of either live performances or music interludes. This helps to capture a bit of the culture and lifestyle of the characters, puts their relationship in context and otherwise brings the viewer into their world, but strongly skews its core audience young. This is a shame, as its themes are actually quite mature and the story is told with a sort of backward looking wisdom that many young people may not be able to fully appreciate.

Then there is the videography. The movie is full of gorgeous imagery and a visual richness lacking in most movies shot on film much less shot on digital video. But the same hand held camera work that draws the viewer into the immediacy of the relationship also can be hard to take in long, constant doses. It is no nausea-inducing "Blair Witch Project" debacle, but many will still find it hard to take.

With it's narrative structure, "Nine Songs" takes a winding road on the way to character introduction and interweaves past and present. You don't really have much insight into who these people are until well into the movie and there is never any real indication of what attracted them to one another, but perhaps that is part of the point. The story is so simple as to be virtually non-existent, yet the characters ultimately ring with their own distinctive truth.

While it would be unfair to give this movie an entirely bad review, I must say that it is another in a string of Hollywood blockbusters that simply fails to live up to its own potential. And while the first two thirds of the film are actually quite good, there is a distinct point in the movie where it goes irrevocably south and becomes silly and disappointing. The final revelation is so embarrassingly heavy-handed (it has nothing to do with the aliens) and under-explained, the only way to overcome the staggering letdown is to remind ones' self that it is, after all, a Spielberg movie. Naturally, it is going to have an icky-sweet-sentimental ending that makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the story. Since his over-riding theme is about parental responsibility and the importance of family, he has no choice but to show everyone happy and united at the end, even at the expense of forgoing any sense of the movie's own logic and the opportunity for a truly profound and emotional ending. The substitution of a comfortable sentimentality for real emotion at the end is, perhaps, the film's greatest flaw. Alas, not the only flaw, but the others are more forgivable. There is a whole sequence with Tim Robbins that could almost be completely excised without harming the plot, but sadly it contains a few key elements that lead to the awkward and silly climax (though actually the film could lose that whole section and possibly make better sense). While the action is well staged, the effects impeccable, and the bulk of the movie is engaging, at the end it is still a typical disappointment.

Okay, I did not expect much from this film and there were no satisfying surprises for me, either. My wife put it best: M. Night tries to make films that will appeal to an intellectual audience but is not as smart or clever as the audience he thinks he is appealing to, so his movies just seem silly or dumb. Anyone going to this thinking it is a horror movie is bound to be disappointed - although there are monsters in this film, it seems as if the writer/director actually FAILS to recognize them for what they are: sadly misguided misanthropes who are so smugly self-centered that they feel their piece of fabled security is worth the despicably glib manner in which they utterly fail their children... but that is another story. This movie plays upon our collective desire for a safe place in the worst, most cloying post-9/11 way, and if it were not for some of the most wooden dialogue outside of an Ed Wood movie making this the director's most laughable film yet, there would be little to distract from the ugliness of the picture.

Rarely have there been films where you find actors struggling as hard to make dialogue believable (and by the end, it is impossible to believe that the characters would have naturally talked that way). I saw the ending reveal a mile away (from the preview even, though just because I'm a touch cynical and tried predicting what "surprise" ending was going to be in store). But forgiving that, and respecting that the director clearly uses genre material to draw his audience in with the hope of achieving something which, alas, his talent is not able to deliver, it is still hard to forgive the movie as a whole. I will grant that it is beautifully shot and has one interesting character and maybe three good performances. But it has a truly dreadful story, full of attempts at suspense that lead nowhere, and a sickening final act wherein the movie's true monsters present to themselves the error of their ways and completely miss the mark. In the end, there is no moral message here, although it plays as though there is. So much the sadder for the audience.

Leaving the theater, we heard lots of grumbling, not a single nice thing being said about the movie. This was the Saturday night crowd. And who are the movie's true monsters? Here's the spoiler for you: the creative team that put it together and the distributor who has marketed it for you, the moviegoing public.