Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 07/12
NINE
(The Weinstein Company)
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Written By: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Stacy Ferguson, Sophia Loren
Screened at: Lighthouse International, NYC, 12/4/09
Opens: December 18, 2009
Calderon de la barca, the 17th Century Spanish playwright wrote “La Vida es Sueno” (“Life is a Dream”), describing a man, Segismundo, the putative heir to the king of Poland, who commits two violent acts. When he is drugged and returned to prison, he is told that the vicious events are nothing but his dream. The key person in, Federico Fellini’s classic film “8-1/2,” made in 1982 into the Broadway musical “Nine” and now adapted by Rob Marshall for the big screen, evokes an alternate vision. Dreams, at nighttime but especially during the day (like when you sit through a two-hour lecture on medieval Slobotka), are a more colorful and significant part of your life than objective reality. A major segment of Marshall’s movie takes place inside the head of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), the preeminent Italian film director of his time (fashioned on Federico Fellini’s own life). When director Marshall trains his cameras on some of Guido’s hallucinations, the movie is on fire.
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One can see the awards guilds, who have already begun meeting to make nominations, about to honor “Nine” for cinematography, ensemble acting, choreography, editing, soundtrack, and adapted screenplay, and more—if they do not, there’s no justice in the movie world. “Nine” is extraordinary, taking what would seem to be a subject fit for a doctoral dissertation in psychology—a director’s block that prevents the man from doing a movie with the grandiose title “Italia”—and fashioning it into a blockbusting work of art. It takes two years for Guido to realize the cause of his block, or mid-life crisis if you prefer, but we in the audience don’t need a degree in psychology to figure it out. If you cannot perceive this during the first half of the movie, not to worry. The answer is clear by its conclusion.
The screenplay by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella finds Guido Contini turning forty, having to shoot a film for which he cannot write a script, and facing a crisis in his marriage to his wife, Luisa Contini (Marion Cotillard), who threatens to leave him if he continues to tomcat around Rome. Though he cannot write, he can certainly daydream, his visions turning the screen into the actions of a number of particularly hot women who lust after this alpha male, including Claudia (Nicole Kidman), Carla (Penelope Cruz), Saraghina (Fergie), and Stephanie (Kate Hudson). He is hounded by the press wherever he goes and flattered by people from the bellman of a plush hotel (Damiano Bisozzi) to priests he meets on the beach (Massimiliano Belsito, Roberto Sbraccia)—who advise him that though the Church condemned his movies, “We had to, but we loved them.”
Guido goes so deeply into his inner visions that he can no longer tell reality from hallucinations, and who can blame him? Carla (Penelope Cruz, who has never been more sizzling), performs a horizontal dance on a hotel bed, advising Guido that when he returns from a meeting, she will wait for him “with my legs open.” Stephanie (Kate Hudson), picks him up in a hotel bar and becomes another of his girls, while Guido cannot shake the image of Saraghina (Fergie), a hooker with whom he had a more-than-professional relationship, not to forget Claudia (Nicole Kidman). Even Lilli (Judi Dench), his costume designer, looks great when she prances about the stage singing in praise of the Folies Bergere. Poor Guido: What a miserable life! And his mamma (Sophia Loren), reminds him that nobody can help him except himself. The key to Guido’s misery, if you haven’t guessed, lies in the shoddy way that he has treated his wife, Luisa. The solution, then, becomes clear.
Photographer Dion Beebe captures the physical romance of Italy, from the working-class sections of Rome to seaside vistas of Anzio and Anguillera, without missing out on a shot of the famous Cincecitta film studio, which is well utilized in the making of “Nine.” Of course Rome’s Via Veneto, the Forum and the Coliseum serve as co-stars in this glorious film.
Who knew that Daniel Day-Lewis, whose character, Guido, anchors the proceedings can sing…and that he can keep up the Italian accent throughout? And that Judi Dench can sing, dance, and look really good as she belts out a song in praise of the Folies? While Day-Lewis holds the screen with tour-de-force acting, “Nine” is a solid ensemble production. The musical has no songs as romantic as “The Music of the Night” from “Phantom of the Opera” or well remembered by just about the entire musical works of “South Pacific,” but for energy and for sound that propels the movie theater into audio heaven, “Nine” is the ticket.
Guido sings “I can’t make this movie/ There’s no way that I’ll begin it/ I can’t bear to see the cameras roll/ Problem is the author lost control.” I should only have a mid-like crisis like Guido’s.
NINE (The Weinstein Company)
Rated PG-13. 112 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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