Nine… nine… nine…
What to say about Nine…
Actually, there is a lot to say about Nine, so buckle in.
This is one of the most singularly frustrating movie experiences I have had in the last few years. By rights, this should have been the crowning achievement of a decade when musicals swept back into the mainstream, which has been one of the best things about the last 10 years of cinema. The source material is a well-respected musical (one which I haven’t seen on stage myself). It has a sensational cast of actresses and one of the greatest actors of his generation. The behind the scenes tech staff is incredible. And Rob Marshall, after the Oscar-winning Chicago, seemed like a safe pair of hands to guide this towards ritzy glory.
Yet the film ultimately fails, and it is the type of heart-breaking, infuriating failure that still produces a film worth talking about and seeing. For every misstep that the film takes (and there are a lot of them) there are moments that work perfectly, and provide some of the keenest, most emotionally devastating work in a musical yet.
The easiest way to describe Nine is as a musical re-interpretation of Fellini’s 8 ½ . An emotionally manipulative Italian director (Daniel Day Lewis) has a moment of personal and artistic crisis and slowly goes off the rails as he tries to mount a massive come-back picture. Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judie Dench, Sophia Loren and Fergie play various women in his life and each one has a number which (should) tie directly into Guido.
What we have here is a concept musical. The plot of Nine is simplistic but that’s not really the point. The show was about dramatising this moment of collapse, showing how Guido got to this point and the damage he has caused to the women around him. As such, I don’t have a problem with the slightly aimless and episodic nature of the screenplay. It fits in with the nature of what the film is trying to show. Unfortunately, when you decide to make a concept musical, you have a whole new set of rules which are important to help still give shape and substance to your piece.
Stephen Sondheim is the master of the concept musical. Think about something like Company, a show which has some similarities to Nine. Company also demonstrates a crisis of faith in its central male figure – Robert doesn’t know if he can ever find a woman and marry, which he feels pressurised to do by all those around him. Company examines modern relationships, marriage and neuroses. It has a ‘plot’ but it is really more a series of thematically and emotionally connected sketches. Yet it works as a cohesive piece because each of the songs plays in to the theme, while also being funny (I’m Not Getting Married Today), sad (The Ladies Who Luch), romantic (Marry me a Little), passionate (Another Hundred People) and melancholy (Sorry/Grateful).
Nine’s score isn’t quite at that level (few musicals are). But it does have some wonderful songs, the type that may not be instantly catchy in the modern pop-Hairpsray mould, but are suffused with feeling, some great lyrics and beautiful melodies. They require a little bit of extra engagement from the audience, and on that level I applaud the producers for taking a musical that doesn’t have any easy emotional or melodic hook and running with it.
But not all the songs work and after the first half hour it becomes clear that the film is floundering by utterly failing to provide a compelling reason for the concept to be explored. I don’t think the filmmakers (and I include the scriptwriter, director and leading man in that category) ever figure out what to do with the character of Guido. He just sort of sits there, providing a vague focus for a lot of busy scenes and spectacular emoting
To go back to Company for a second, Robert also displays a lack of focus as a main character. But this fuzziness is built into the story – he becomes a sort of avatar for the audience to experience the rest of the show. Though Company suffers in ultimately failing to truly resolve Robert (even in the short-term context of what we see on stage), he works perfectly for most of the show.
Guido is too specific a character to work as an effective avatar for the audience. Basically, he is an unsympathetic cock-hound who runs roughshod over the men and women in his life who are drawn to him because of his artistic sensibility. Because we never see any of his works (and have to take his abilities on faith), and have no connection to Guido outside of what is shown in the film, we cannot share in these people’s fascination with him. This problem is exacerbated by the casting of Daniel Day-Lewis who is completely wrong for the role.
Over the years Day-lewis has changed a lot as an actor. He has lost the passionate intensity that he used to bring to roles such in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Last of the Mohicans and instead begun to specialise in complex grotesques – think Bill the Butcher or Daniel Plainview. He is still doing marvellous work but it is light years away from the romantic dash and sensuality that Guido should be displaying. Javier Bardem, who had been originally cast in the role, could very well have squared the circle and given viewers a reason to care for Guido or believe that these amazing women would flock around him.
Then we have Rob Marshall. Marshall did a good job on Chicago. He and genius writer Bill Condon found a way to honour the vaudevillian structure of the original stage show and still make it cinematic. It was short, snappy, cynical and fun. But this is much closer to the bloated, misogynistic shit-fest of Memoirs of a Geisha than Chicago. Marshall simply cannot create a narrative out of this film and it is his decision to stage every musical number in a conceptual limbo of Guido’s empty film set that is the primary mistake in the film. It’s the same conceit he used in Chicago, where it made sense. None of the songs in that musical were really meant to carry the same emotional weight as the ones in Nine, so doing them at a sort of Brechtian remove was a smart decision.
In Nine, it destroys the emotional flow of the scene. Take Luisa’s number My Husband Makes Movies. Luisa sings this to a frozen tableau at a restaurant, which is placed on the empty soundstage. There is no real reason for this, and it takes it out of the immediate heart-breaking moment where she realises Guido’s lie about Carla. Cotillard’s moving performance saves it, but this is a problem which dogs most numbers. It does a similar disservice to Nicole Kidman’s number, which is given the perfect set-up by Marshall to occur in real-time only to cut away once again. The only song where that conceit really works is for A Call from the Vatican, Penelope Cruz’s insanely sexy early number. It’s believable that this routine would be performed in Guido’s imagination as he listens to what is basically a sex call.
And that’s before we even get to the songs which Marshall fails to provide a narrative or emotional context for their existence. What, exactly, is the point of Judi Dench’s number Folie Bergere? Or Sophia Loren’s lullaby? Or Kate Hudsons’s Cinema Italiano? They don’t actually reflect on Guido or his predicament. They just sort of exist to spice up the plot, which may work if they had been memorable or well staged. You could remove each one of those numbers from the film and miss nothing.
OK, there are a lot of negatives here. But that is just because these elements ruin so much of what is really impressive. Nicole Kidman nails Claudia’s elusive allusiveness. As poor as her song is, Judi Dench gives just the right amount of peppery warmth as Lili and she brings out the best in Day-lewis in particular in their scenes together. The photography by Dionne Bebe is astonishing at times. And Fergie tears the screen up in her performance of Be Italian – bringing surprising vocal power and a go-for-broke, crude sexuality that really works (it’s a shame Marshall rips off his own work form the Cell Block Tango, which is itself a bit of a Fosse rip off).
Penelope Cruz is an actress who seems to have hit her stride in a major way in the last five years. A Call From the Vatican manages the difficult task of being sultry and quite explicit without once being skanky. She brings out Claudia’s playfulness and has killer comic timing. And despite the predictable trajectory of her story, she’s able to suggest a world of wounded pain and in her later scenes.
The one element that unquestionably works however is Marion Cotillard. I am not kidding when I say this is one of the greatest film musical performances of the last 10 years. Cotillard has two songs and just a handful of scenes. She plays a rather traditional wronged wife role. And yet, she is magical, alive and heart-breaking at every moment. She has such a good voice, that she is one of the few cast members who can really act through her song. My Husband Makes Movies, despite being poorly staged, is magical; you feel all the compromises and rejection that Luisa has endured, yet she doesn’t once seem to be asking for pity.
The new song she is given, Take it All, is a brilliant capper. It’s the other number which sort of benefits form being split between the sound-stage and a dialogue scene and is beautifully edited. As Luisa sings in a what appears to be a strip club, and is manhandled and cat-called by those around her, she sings bitterly about how Guido has used her emotionally. It then cross-cuts to her break-up scene with Guido, each scene raising the intensity of the song that follows. It is a fantastic moment, and if the rest of the film had hit this level of emotional and visceral thrill, it would have been something special.
OK, I am nearly done. I will own this on DVD. There are scenes and entire sequences that I can’t wait to see again. Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz should certainly be in the hunt for awards. It shows that the musical form can do ambitious emotional landscapes. It just needs a visionary in the helm. Its time for Marshall to fuck off and let somebody else play (why hasn’t anybody given Julie Taymor a decent budget to make a musical? Surely her version of Sunday in the Park would be incredible! Or how about Spike Lee’s Company?)
Update: I went again last night to see the film and it crystallised once more the faults and successes of the film. Rob Marshall is the very definition of a one trick pony. Cruz and Cotillard are sensational. The script is a mess (though some of the dialogue is great). But two things stood out on second view. The first is that the Folie Bergererererrrer number is a disaster - the real low point of the film; not only for its lazy, boring staging but also for having absolutely nothing to do with the plot. The second is the I don't think I gave Kidman enough credit in the film. She has an incredibly tricky role - and even if her voice doesn't have the power to really sell her song, you can see it all in her eyes. A small reminder of what a formidable actress she really is (and she looks sensational)
What to say about Nine…
Actually, there is a lot to say about Nine, so buckle in.
This is one of the most singularly frustrating movie experiences I have had in the last few years. By rights, this should have been the crowning achievement of a decade when musicals swept back into the mainstream, which has been one of the best things about the last 10 years of cinema. The source material is a well-respected musical (one which I haven’t seen on stage myself). It has a sensational cast of actresses and one of the greatest actors of his generation. The behind the scenes tech staff is incredible. And Rob Marshall, after the Oscar-winning Chicago, seemed like a safe pair of hands to guide this towards ritzy glory.
Yet the film ultimately fails, and it is the type of heart-breaking, infuriating failure that still produces a film worth talking about and seeing. For every misstep that the film takes (and there are a lot of them) there are moments that work perfectly, and provide some of the keenest, most emotionally devastating work in a musical yet.
The easiest way to describe Nine is as a musical re-interpretation of Fellini’s 8 ½ . An emotionally manipulative Italian director (Daniel Day Lewis) has a moment of personal and artistic crisis and slowly goes off the rails as he tries to mount a massive come-back picture. Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judie Dench, Sophia Loren and Fergie play various women in his life and each one has a number which (should) tie directly into Guido.
What we have here is a concept musical. The plot of Nine is simplistic but that’s not really the point. The show was about dramatising this moment of collapse, showing how Guido got to this point and the damage he has caused to the women around him. As such, I don’t have a problem with the slightly aimless and episodic nature of the screenplay. It fits in with the nature of what the film is trying to show. Unfortunately, when you decide to make a concept musical, you have a whole new set of rules which are important to help still give shape and substance to your piece.
Stephen Sondheim is the master of the concept musical. Think about something like Company, a show which has some similarities to Nine. Company also demonstrates a crisis of faith in its central male figure – Robert doesn’t know if he can ever find a woman and marry, which he feels pressurised to do by all those around him. Company examines modern relationships, marriage and neuroses. It has a ‘plot’ but it is really more a series of thematically and emotionally connected sketches. Yet it works as a cohesive piece because each of the songs plays in to the theme, while also being funny (I’m Not Getting Married Today), sad (The Ladies Who Luch), romantic (Marry me a Little), passionate (Another Hundred People) and melancholy (Sorry/Grateful).
Nine’s score isn’t quite at that level (few musicals are). But it does have some wonderful songs, the type that may not be instantly catchy in the modern pop-Hairpsray mould, but are suffused with feeling, some great lyrics and beautiful melodies. They require a little bit of extra engagement from the audience, and on that level I applaud the producers for taking a musical that doesn’t have any easy emotional or melodic hook and running with it.
But not all the songs work and after the first half hour it becomes clear that the film is floundering by utterly failing to provide a compelling reason for the concept to be explored. I don’t think the filmmakers (and I include the scriptwriter, director and leading man in that category) ever figure out what to do with the character of Guido. He just sort of sits there, providing a vague focus for a lot of busy scenes and spectacular emoting
To go back to Company for a second, Robert also displays a lack of focus as a main character. But this fuzziness is built into the story – he becomes a sort of avatar for the audience to experience the rest of the show. Though Company suffers in ultimately failing to truly resolve Robert (even in the short-term context of what we see on stage), he works perfectly for most of the show.
Guido is too specific a character to work as an effective avatar for the audience. Basically, he is an unsympathetic cock-hound who runs roughshod over the men and women in his life who are drawn to him because of his artistic sensibility. Because we never see any of his works (and have to take his abilities on faith), and have no connection to Guido outside of what is shown in the film, we cannot share in these people’s fascination with him. This problem is exacerbated by the casting of Daniel Day-Lewis who is completely wrong for the role.
Over the years Day-lewis has changed a lot as an actor. He has lost the passionate intensity that he used to bring to roles such in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Last of the Mohicans and instead begun to specialise in complex grotesques – think Bill the Butcher or Daniel Plainview. He is still doing marvellous work but it is light years away from the romantic dash and sensuality that Guido should be displaying. Javier Bardem, who had been originally cast in the role, could very well have squared the circle and given viewers a reason to care for Guido or believe that these amazing women would flock around him.
Then we have Rob Marshall. Marshall did a good job on Chicago. He and genius writer Bill Condon found a way to honour the vaudevillian structure of the original stage show and still make it cinematic. It was short, snappy, cynical and fun. But this is much closer to the bloated, misogynistic shit-fest of Memoirs of a Geisha than Chicago. Marshall simply cannot create a narrative out of this film and it is his decision to stage every musical number in a conceptual limbo of Guido’s empty film set that is the primary mistake in the film. It’s the same conceit he used in Chicago, where it made sense. None of the songs in that musical were really meant to carry the same emotional weight as the ones in Nine, so doing them at a sort of Brechtian remove was a smart decision.
In Nine, it destroys the emotional flow of the scene. Take Luisa’s number My Husband Makes Movies. Luisa sings this to a frozen tableau at a restaurant, which is placed on the empty soundstage. There is no real reason for this, and it takes it out of the immediate heart-breaking moment where she realises Guido’s lie about Carla. Cotillard’s moving performance saves it, but this is a problem which dogs most numbers. It does a similar disservice to Nicole Kidman’s number, which is given the perfect set-up by Marshall to occur in real-time only to cut away once again. The only song where that conceit really works is for A Call from the Vatican, Penelope Cruz’s insanely sexy early number. It’s believable that this routine would be performed in Guido’s imagination as he listens to what is basically a sex call.
And that’s before we even get to the songs which Marshall fails to provide a narrative or emotional context for their existence. What, exactly, is the point of Judi Dench’s number Folie Bergere? Or Sophia Loren’s lullaby? Or Kate Hudsons’s Cinema Italiano? They don’t actually reflect on Guido or his predicament. They just sort of exist to spice up the plot, which may work if they had been memorable or well staged. You could remove each one of those numbers from the film and miss nothing.
OK, there are a lot of negatives here. But that is just because these elements ruin so much of what is really impressive. Nicole Kidman nails Claudia’s elusive allusiveness. As poor as her song is, Judi Dench gives just the right amount of peppery warmth as Lili and she brings out the best in Day-lewis in particular in their scenes together. The photography by Dionne Bebe is astonishing at times. And Fergie tears the screen up in her performance of Be Italian – bringing surprising vocal power and a go-for-broke, crude sexuality that really works (it’s a shame Marshall rips off his own work form the Cell Block Tango, which is itself a bit of a Fosse rip off).
Penelope Cruz is an actress who seems to have hit her stride in a major way in the last five years. A Call From the Vatican manages the difficult task of being sultry and quite explicit without once being skanky. She brings out Claudia’s playfulness and has killer comic timing. And despite the predictable trajectory of her story, she’s able to suggest a world of wounded pain and in her later scenes.
The one element that unquestionably works however is Marion Cotillard. I am not kidding when I say this is one of the greatest film musical performances of the last 10 years. Cotillard has two songs and just a handful of scenes. She plays a rather traditional wronged wife role. And yet, she is magical, alive and heart-breaking at every moment. She has such a good voice, that she is one of the few cast members who can really act through her song. My Husband Makes Movies, despite being poorly staged, is magical; you feel all the compromises and rejection that Luisa has endured, yet she doesn’t once seem to be asking for pity.
The new song she is given, Take it All, is a brilliant capper. It’s the other number which sort of benefits form being split between the sound-stage and a dialogue scene and is beautifully edited. As Luisa sings in a what appears to be a strip club, and is manhandled and cat-called by those around her, she sings bitterly about how Guido has used her emotionally. It then cross-cuts to her break-up scene with Guido, each scene raising the intensity of the song that follows. It is a fantastic moment, and if the rest of the film had hit this level of emotional and visceral thrill, it would have been something special.
OK, I am nearly done. I will own this on DVD. There are scenes and entire sequences that I can’t wait to see again. Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz should certainly be in the hunt for awards. It shows that the musical form can do ambitious emotional landscapes. It just needs a visionary in the helm. Its time for Marshall to fuck off and let somebody else play (why hasn’t anybody given Julie Taymor a decent budget to make a musical? Surely her version of Sunday in the Park would be incredible! Or how about Spike Lee’s Company?)
Update: I went again last night to see the film and it crystallised once more the faults and successes of the film. Rob Marshall is the very definition of a one trick pony. Cruz and Cotillard are sensational. The script is a mess (though some of the dialogue is great). But two things stood out on second view. The first is that the Folie Bergererererrrer number is a disaster - the real low point of the film; not only for its lazy, boring staging but also for having absolutely nothing to do with the plot. The second is the I don't think I gave Kidman enough credit in the film. She has an incredibly tricky role - and even if her voice doesn't have the power to really sell her song, you can see it all in her eyes. A small reminder of what a formidable actress she really is (and she looks sensational)
