As the World Turns
As this year comes to an end so comes a need to find the right film to end the year on but what film can achieve such a lofty goal? That is a question that requires reflection as I must sit and dwell on the past year and make a true and proper decision. And what a fucking miserable year it has been.
Though for my personal life, it has been quite well. I have a nephew now that warms the heart tremendously every time I see him. I am to become an uncle 3 more times in the upcoming year and so at the moment, I am well. The rest of the world though, what a shit state of a world we find ourselves in. Nothing seems to be going well for anyone and we, the ones getting by or scraping just, must suffer at the whim of those in power. It has been a tough year for the most part and to make a decision on the last film to write on has also been tough.
Fast forward to Christmas Day 2025. I am laying in bed and scrolling through Tubi, possibly the GREATEST streaming service to exist, even though I should have been getting myself ready to go see family and presents and all that. Passing through Tubi's library, I come across a film that I haven't seen in sometime though I remember it not being all that great nor good and just rides the line of mediocre and OK. Though even with this realization, a strange sensation of nostalgia hits.
I make a note of it and after surviving the day and night when having to travel home then go to work on Friday and now manifesting this review on Saturday night; I watch this particular film. A film containing the only subject matter that I could latch onto to take my attention away from all this Christmas mania; The Devil.
Now, there are a lot of films involving the devil that I could have chosen. Something along the lines of Belladonna of Sadness or This is the End but there is something about seeing that terrible poster for the Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate that keeps me going back again and again.
First and foremost; Roman Polanski is a piece of shit. Nothing I can do or say will change that fact. I just wanted to acknowledge this piece of common sense at the beginning of this review for it will at least give myself and you, dear reader, an understanding that I have never condone nor approve of his behavior.
I have no interest in the man and it is about time that he has essentially become persona non grata. With that being said, the following review will be of a film he has directed. I am in fact a fan of his films with Chinatown being one of my personal favorites and so maybe in the future I will speak more about these particular films in which he has directed but to discuss any more of the man himself is something I do not particularly have an interest in. Even so though; Why this film? It goes back to this singular moment in childhood.
I remember as a kid, I believe around the age of 6 or 7, I was living in a sort of forced isolation. I would go to school and spend time after school out and about but when I would get home, there was only home. I lived too far from cities and neighbors to be able to just go out and the woods surrounding us were the kind that you could not trust a 5 or 6 year old to traverse through.
And so when the weekend came, there would be times where my mother would take my three sisters to go off and do what it was that young girls and mothers do and I was just left alone at the house. Locked inside with enough food to get through the day and satellite television to spend time with.
I believe that I was surfing the 500 channels when I stumbled upon the Sci-Fi Channel, now known as SyFy, and caught a specific moment in this film.
It was the scene of Emmanuelle Seigner flying down the stairs and then doing like two to three frame kung-fu fighting.
I saw this scene and my brain processed it as: "What the fuck was that?"
I then proceeded to watch the rest of the film. Trying to catch up as best as I could when the commercial breaks came around. Even though it didn't hit any real points of interest that I thought I had at that point, I was very much finding enjoyment in watching adults doing something adult in nature and with various mentions of the devil being thrown in as a spice but before I continue down memory lane.
The Movie
Dean Corso, played by a scummy looking, foreshadowing?, Johnny Depp, is a man who loves books. Even more-so, he loves to track down the rarest of books and making a profit from selling them. A mercenary whose clientele consists of the upper echelon of society who have no desire for monies but for rare one of a kind books.
As the movie starts, he swindles out a very rare first edition of Don Quixote from a pair of uncultured siblings as their stroked out father listens in pain as Dean 'Art of the Deal' Corso takes the multiple volumes for cheap and leaves them with the idea that the remaining library they had is one worth millions upon millions.
A complete scumbag in control but as the film goes on, he becomes a character that gets more and more out of his element. He gets hired by Boris Balkan, played by a beefy Frank Langella, to go out into the world and confirm that his copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows is authentic compared to the other 3 left in existence. A book so rare and mythical that it is supposedly a reproduction of text written by the devil himself.
I like to imagine they had an opportunity to do a crossover with the Alan Parker film Angel Heart and have Louis Cyphre show up but alas it was not to be.
So Dean goes out into the world meeting all these devil freaks who want his copy of the book he has in his book bag and along the way he meets The Girl, played by out of this world looking Emmanuelle Seigner, who helps him solve the riddle of the book.
All this involving murder, secret societies, and a lonely man just wanting to befriend the devil with it accumulating to Dean Corso fumbling his way in a very Inspector Clouseau way to finally solve the mystery of the ninth gate.
That's the basic gist of the film but back to my memory of the film. I remember watching it at this age and nearing the end, I saw the following shot.
Back to Memory Lane
Near the end of the movie, after Dean Corso has just mercy killed Boris, he enters his late employers car and The Girl happens to be there. She seduces him and as the castle behind them burns, they start to get their freak on.
For all the obvious reasons, this scene stuck in my brain even if it was edited for TV. The scene cuts between the two characters fucking and her eyes turn green and Dean Corso essentially explodes in orgasm.
As Dean Corso enters the ninth gate and the credits start to roll, I sat alone and a bit scared as I truly couldn't really comprehend exactly what I just finished watching. That sex scene replaying because the sequencing of the shots, the engrossing score, and the burning castle in the background made me feel unclean. As though I was witnessing something truly forbidden and I would get in trouble if I were to share what I saw with anyone else.
The Journey to the Present
Now, as the years went on I would find the movie playing on television as I passively channel surf and watch whatever was on but I would tell myself that I would commit to it totally one day. As that day never came, I would then end up watching the other films from this director and those films being compared to the various other films I have seen, I then begin to create a certain amount of high expectations towards The Ninth Gate in particular.
Today
I watch it now and think to myself that I now understand the allure as a child but as an adult, the film pulls me in still but in something else more so than the feeling of it. If that makes sense.
The first piece of this movie that I enjoy is the main character. This Dean Corso guy plays off as someone slick in the beginning when he makes that previously mentioned deal of the century but as the movie continues, he doesn't know what the fuck he is getting involved in. Getting used for pleasure, getting beat up, then ultimately becoming the chosen one from the devil to enter the ninth gate. Which is so anticlimactic. What a wet fart of an ending.
It's fascinating though to see a character that has the look of say a 'film-noir' type of character and fumbles his way towards the end of the mystery. Obviously The Girl is the major pushing factor since there really isn't much within the character of Dean Corso that would make him want to solve anything. I was hoping on this viewing that I would finally see something worthwhile to this character but alas, this was not to be.
What also catches my interest to the film these days though are the following. Seeing the film all the way through has made me enjoy the music, which in itself is just absolutely gorgeous. The worthwhile part of obtaining a 2nd hand copy of the DVD for this film is the fact that I have access to an isolated score audio track which will go very far for me as just playing this soundtrack in the background as it is truly something worth its while.
The other part I find myself enjoying, that actually deals with the mechanics of the film, is the notion of how important books are. This whole concept of a guy getting paid a crazy amount of money to locate copies of a book and how much power this book has that people are willing to kill for it is something that strikes me now as niche and exciting. I will always find narratives revolving around books or writers as favorites and the concept of a thriller revolving around a book is a great one but its a shame that it kinda works and kinda doesn't in this film. I should probably read the novel that this is based on. Might scratch the itch there.
It's also pretty fun to see these upper echelon types that find these books so important get their due in the worst way possible. This might just be the inner proletarian inside of me smiling and nodding as everyone gets got. Tough to say but there should be more thrillers revolving around books. Those seem like fun concepts to play around with. Maybe there already is and I just haven't been aware. Maybe I will be aware. Maybe I won't. Only time will tell.
The Final Conclusion to My Final Thoughts on the Subject at Hand which is this Movie Review
Now as the credits roll, I believe that I enjoyed looking for this film, though who knows how many more times I will watch this, as a way to justify or reignite those feelings that I had when I first saw those images. There was so much power in them when I was young.
Trying to fit those fragments among the rest of the film to create what I hoped was something fantastic. To solve a mystery that ultimately did not fulfill those expectations. I do now wish after seeing this film for around the 6th or 7th time now that I liked it more. Though I do enjoy the film even though its not that good, I wish I never saw it again after that 1st time. For an opportunity to let those images live in mystery still.