Movie: The Ninth Day

This film is about as badly marketed as you could hope for, at least if they want anyone to watch it. The poster (the same as the graphic on the Kino site) made me want to run the other way....the trailer was even worse, presenting a horrible vision of profoundly Teutonic doom and peril that might have gotten it some traction in Berlin, but is tragically misapplied in America.

When your movie is already threatening to sink beneath the weight of its premise (priest in concentration camp engages in existential battle with Nazi officer), do you really need to load it down further with an apocalyptic ad campaign?

The astute among you are doubtless asking "well then, why in the heck did you see it?"

The wife, of course. And the fact that my pal Bob wanted to see it, giving me some backup. The marketing was so effective only two other hearty souls joined us for the 7pm show, its last.

After all of that, the movie was great.
I recommend it to all thoughtful adults.
Ten minutes in I understood why the wife was so eager to have someone to chew it over with. It's the kind of movie this country doesn't make any more; it ask hard questions and shuns easy answers.

But it provides resolution, even though the exact meaning is left to the viewer.
I'm not a fan of movies where ambiguity serves as a fig leaf obscuring shallowness of thought and lazy writing. Not the case here, the script and its execution evidence a precision and depth of thought that is almost literally stunning.

And it manages this without crushing you flat with the seriousness and gravity of its premise. I'm not sure how, exactly, which is why I'm just an interested amateur of cinema.

The acting is off-the-charts good. The direction is dead on, doing exactly what it means to do. Nothing cheap, nothing easy. Looking back, the amount of effort that went into this film is inescapably obvious, but you're completely unaware of it while watching.

Aside from the work it does on the exercise of power and what it means to the people on both sides of the equation it's a great film about religion, a subject that has become almost impossible to address without resorting to Thomas Kinkade brand kitsch-piety. It addresses the meaning and price of personal faith and also the intersection between that faith and the power structure that grew up around it, the Catholic Church.

It's not the kind of triumphalist necro-porn that so successfully stirred fundie loins in Passion of the Christ, it's much deeper and more thoughtful and eschews the potential to wallow in the torture of the death camps, using it as a narrative tool rather than an end to itself.

So check this one out on DVD. Don't be put off by the cover or the trailer.
It's a movie about power and faith for grown-ups, and deserves to find its audience.