NINE

Written by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella
Directed by Rob Marshall
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Fergie and Sophia Loren


Journalist: What I am asking, Maestro, is have you run out of things to say?

I don’t think NINE could look better on paper if it tried. You’ve got Michael Tolkin, the author of “The Player”, and the late, great Anthony Minghella translating a Broadway classic to the screen, that has even deeper roots as the show itself was based of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. You’ve got Rob Marshall in the director’s chair. This is the man who reinvigorated the movie musical right when it was on the very brink of extinction with the Oscar-winning, CHICAGO, after all. You’ve got a cast of women unlike anything I’ve seen on film before – Marion Cotillard! Penelope Cruz! Nicole Kidman! Judi Dench! Kate Hudson! Fergie! Sophie Loren, for Pete’s sake! And who do you have at the center of all these ladies? Why none other than the genius of the day, Daniel Day-Lewis. How then could all of the excitement that this incredible pedigree inspires be completely missing from the final cut?


The problem might be the show itself. Day-Lewis is Guido Contini, Italy’s most exciting internationally recognized director. Well, he used to be. As of late, his films haven’t been connecting with audiences like they used to. We meet him amidst a flurry of press for his latest project and we quickly realize that he’s got no movie to make. Before long, we are introduced to his wife (Cotillard), his mistress (Cruz), his mother (Loren), his muse (Kidman) and his creative rock (Dench). It isn’t long after that that you realize juggling all these women in his life and ultimately trying t control them like he does his films is making it impossible for him to breathe. The women aren’t smothering him though. He is doing that all to himself by failing to see them all as actual people instead of supporting players in his own life. An unsympathetic egomaniac does not rally an audience.


It is even more troubling to me though that Marshall’s direction never allows for these lovely ladies to elevate past supporting players either. It’s ironic really to watch a movie about a blocked director directed without the inspiration to make it as great as it so clearly could be. Each woman in the cast gets to sing their song one by one and each one sings of how their lives have been changed by Contini, be that good or bad. As we never get to see these characters for who they are but rather just through the eyes of Contini himself, the hurt they sing about it isn’t connected to anything real. That said, neither are the musical numbers themselves. They all look and sound fantastic and, not to mislead, are pretty enjoyable too. They just keep coming in such an expected fashion that they lack the spontaneity necessary to make them truly pop.


Like CHICAGO, Marshall wants the musical numbers to feel like a surreal layer to the characters’ live. They seem to be happening in their minds but you never feel like you’ve actually been in anyone’s head. Anyone, that is, except for Contini. Every song and every scene is about him and while Day-Lewis does a perfectly fine job losing his way, he never quite finds it either. Although history is given to suggest where his troubles may have started, his woes never amount past the point of self-indulgence and subsequently NINE never becomes the masterpiece it should have. Instead, this fascinating dissection of one man’s mind never gets deep enough to entertain past the surface.

Remembering the year 2002

2002 is not a year that I often like to recall. I was 25 years old and there was so much going on in my life at the time that it all ended up falling down on top of me. I had just graduated from university but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life so I just went on going to work day after day at my pointless retail job. As if that weren’t daunting enough, my relationship of three years was coming to a particularly dramatic end. We would fight about everything. It got so bad at one point that one night, after coming home from having seen THE HOURS and CHICAGO back to back, we argued extensively over which was better as if that actually mattered. I was in THE HOURS camp. The manner in which Stephen Daldry brought depression to the forefront was shockingly palpable. Paul was adamantly pro-CHICAGO. I suppose escaping harsh reality for musical exuberance was where his head was at. With a little perspective and a heck of a lot of healing, I think I can finally admit that he may have been right after all … maybe … at least about that anyway.


I should clarify; I always loved CHICAGO. I felt that Bill Condon, the screenwriter who would go on much later to direct DREAMGIRLS, had found the most seamless way to adapt a stage musical to the screen. He borrowed the concept from the stage production itself but he brought it to such new heights that it made CHICAGO into a triumphant return for a genre that had long been suffering. The musical numbers that would ordinarily disrupt the story were all worked in as a means of escape in the mind of the star, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger). Having just been arrested for the capital murder of her lover, Roxie desperately needed a way to cope with her new reality. First time feature filmmaker and veteran theatre director, Rob Marshall, took Condon’s sharp script and made sure that every nuance was not only handled delicately but honoured so that CHICAGO could do more than just be an excellent film experience. Marshall infused an energy to a show that is so stark on stage by keeping the pacing fast and the lighting always theatrical and richly colorful. Suddenly, you had a musical that didn’t have numbers that stopped the story but rather commented on it at all times and made it that much more exhilarating. After winning the Oscar for Best Picture that year and taking in roughly $170 million at the box office, it was clear that Marshall’s CHICAGO had saved the musical itself from certain death.


I should also clarify that I was depressed when I first saw THE HOURS. Perhaps, as I am now not depressed, I can look back on the two works and have an easier time delighting in the musical while feeling a degree of hesitation going back to darker times. At the time though, I distinctly remember feeling that the isolation of depression was captured not only so succinctly but in a fashion that was intricately complex and beautifully executed. THE HOURS is all about the actresses. A trio of incredible women, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, play variations on the same woman throughout the eras to show the timeliness of depression and how it is seen and dealt with differently depending on the period and the surroundings. It does run the risk of being seen as a distinctly female experience but clearly that isn’t so. One day around the time of the film’s release, a woman came in to the record store I was working at and asked for the brilliant score by Philip Glass. I immediately began talking to her about how profoundly the film had affected me, even going so far as to cite specific scenes in detail. She had just come from the film and you could see she had been crying. This woman was bewildered that I was able to connect with this film coming from a male perspective. I simply told her straight up, as she left the store with the score in hand, that depression has no gender, that it is universal.

The truth is that neither Paul now I was right. Film appreciation, as I’ve said time and time again, is inherently subjective. The way we see film, the manner in which it moves or excites us, is directly affected by what we bring to the screen as viewers – whether that be because we are in the middle of a painful breakup or because we woke up with a musical bounce in our step. What matters more is that these films worked their way into our hearts and not at all how they got there in the first place. Of course, we weren’t actually arguing about the movies; we were arguing about much harder, much more complicated issues. Our passion for the films allowed us to use them as our swords and shields. The films themselves helped us each move on.

Regardless, both films get ...


2002 Top 10

ADAPTATION, Directed by Spike Jonze
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, Michael Moore
CHICAGO, Rob Marshall
FAR FROM HEAVEN, Todd Haynes
FRIDA, Julie Taymor
THE HOURS, Stephen Daldry
THE PIANIST, Roman Polanski
PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, Paul Thomas Anderson
SECRETARY, Steven Shainberg
Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, Alfonso Cuaron

Black Sheep Previews: NINE

Go ahead ... click the video. Watch it. I have. And let me tell you, you should. It's pretty darn exciting.

In 2002, Rob Marshall shimmied his way downstage like it was nobody's business with the Oscar winning musical that restored faith in the musical genre itself, CHICAGO. He also garnered an Oscar nomination for himself as Best Director. Not too bad for his first feature. In 2005, he took his promise and practically squandered it all on the gorgeous but hollow, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. Four years have now passed and Marshall has returned to what he knows he can do well, the musical. NINE originally opened on Broadway in 1982. It was based on an Italian play that itself was inspired by Federico Fellini's autobiographical film, 8 1/2. The premise, in which a director has come to a creative and existential midlife crisis and is torn by the abundance of women in his life, is convoluted enough but the cast, the cast is bewildering. Daniel Day-Lewis will sing as the lead, Guido Contini. We don't hear him sing in the trailer but there isn't anything Day-Lewis can't do. As if that weren't enough though, the women in his life will be played by Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Fergie and Sophia Loren. That is a lot of lady and a whole lot of potential for drama.


The trailer is as playful as it is colorful. Marshall seems bent on humbling his own persona as Dench goes on about how little a director truly does but then shoves so many visually startling images in our faces as if to say, "THIS is what a director does!" I know what I'll be doing on November 25 when NINE is finally released.

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

Written by Robin Swicord and Doug Wright
Directed by Rob Marshall

Director Rob Marshall has wrapped us a very special present with his follow-up to the Best Picture winning “Chicago”, “Memoirs of a Geisha”. He took all the time he needed to pick just the right box and a multiple-patterned wrapping in brilliant colours before meticulously covering the box and tying a flawless bow around it. It shines like nothing we’ve seen. It’s a shame that upon opening this gift, we see that he forgot to put any thought into what to put in it to begin with as tearing away this perfect packaging leads to nothing more than an empty box.

I have not read the highly successful novel this film is based on. And perhaps I am less in touch with my feminine side than I thought as I do not understand what all these Geishas are complaining about. Sure, the story begins with a young Japanese girl sold to another household and separated from her sister and only remaining family. She lives the life of a slave but is inevitably given the chance of any girls’ lifetime, to become a Geisha (this is not “Memoirs of a Housekeeper” after all). A geisha, in case you’re not entirely familiar, is a moving work of art, a Japanese hostess trained in the art of culture, dance and music. She is not a prostitute or at least this is what we are told. Understandably, I was puzzled when a bidding war begins over our heroine’s virginity in order for her to pay off her debt to the household she grew up in and become a true Geisha.

Ziyi Zhang plays Sayuri, the most sought after Geisha in all the land. She holds her own in what is her first English speaking role but ultimately does not say very much and pales in comparison to Michelle Yeoh, who plays her mentor and brings some much needed spunk, confidence and authority to this fragile, whiny weeper. Perhaps speaking English is the problem itself. Let alone that a large number of Chinese actresses play Japanese parts, this film would have been more effective if it was actually in Japanese. It makes no sense that these women would be speaking to each other in broken English all the time. The struggles to enunciate lead to emotions not being conveyed. The self-imposed communication barrier never allows the viewer to be taken in by this beautiful existence as the beauty comes across as contrived, designed for the North-American box office and not made for artistic purposes … Hope they’re not too disappointed come Oscar time when the only nominations they get are technical ones.

If you’re into art, then “Memoirs” will narrowly carry you along throughout a rich, colorful journey. As for me, I will let Mr. Marshall keep his pretty box to re-use next time on the condition he promises to put something of substance inside it.