Film Review - Nine Days
Images courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Hey, welcome to the review, please sit down. I’m going to pitch you a movie and you’re going to tell the screen what you think of it. Okay? Here goes, imagine Netflix’s The Good Place, but replace the limbo between life and death with the opposite… Limbo between the creation of one’s soul and its entrance into a newborn person. What do you think?
I certainly wouldn’t have funded this movie and that’s another good indicator of why I’m not pursuing a career in entertainment. Nine Days is the best movie of 2021.
A word of warning before I compliment this masterpiece too much, but I cannot stress enough my belief that Nine Days could not have existed without The Good Place… From much of the movies belief of what happens in the after-li-… err, before-life, a job interview-esque test of who is worthy to experience the gifts of life, down to its aesthetic of the new soul’s interview space – a spare room in Will’s house. Another key feature that both projects share is their incredibly nuanced world-building abilities.
Will is somewhat of a watcher: imagine everybody is in The Truman Show bar, and him and his colleagues who each watch roughly 15 people. The subtle inspiration from The Truman Show is especially felt in its embrace of 1990’s static TVs and VCR players. Just like a lot of other details in this movie, such as which exact realm these folk occupy and what happens to those not chosen for life, we will never know why these demi-gods use VCRs, but that a testament to Nine Day’s ability to suspend disbelief and encourage uncertainty. An air of intrigue is maintained from beginning to end as the dramedy treats audiences to heavy doses of reality.
This is where the comparisons to The Good Place end. Though the highest highs of life are often experienced throughout Nine Days, Will also encourages those in contention of humanity to witness its lowest valleys. As each candidate for humanity progresses through their nine days in limbo, we begin to appreciate their subtle differences and these differences in personality, often reduced to nothing when faced with rejection followed by death/erasure, provide some grave insights on the meaning of life and Will’s perception of survival on Earth which reveals his own quirks.
Despite the trivialness of repeated ethics tests on a shrinking cast, Nine Days doesn’t feel repetitive. In fact, it is because these case-study elements that the pace and plot that can withstand such whiplash momentum as the dramedy plays to each character’s personality. Nine Days makes the most of the short time it has on the screen, a powerful lesson that it spends every waking minute exploring as the clock continuously counts down and the existential dread in finality begins seeping in.
Nine Days is showing in select cinemas and streaming online now.