Movies - The Ninth Gate

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	Movies - The Ninth Gate

The Ninth Gate is a Spanish/French mystery movie based on the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It was directed by Roman Polański, and stars Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Frank Langella and Emmanuelle Seigner. It premiered in Europe on August 25, 1999.

Story

Plot outline

The movie starts with rare books-dealer Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) getting a mission from publishing tycoon Boris Balkan (Frank Langella). Balkan has recently acquired a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows by 17th century author Aristide Torchia. The book details the summoning of the devil.

Balkan claims the book is a forgery. He wants Corso to find the other two known copies, find out whether any of them are genuine and – in that case – acquire them for Balkan.

Riddles

The movie offers plenty of riddles to the careful viewer. There is, of course, the main riddle concerning the book's nine illustrations, and the murders, but there are more.

Torchia published the book in 1666 – an ominous number – while the story is set in the year 1999, the same number up-side-down, 333 years later (add the numbers and you get nine, again). Corso is a book lover, but he shows little care for them, even the most valuable one: not wearing gloves, carrying the book in a shabby bag, leaving it unguarded, drinking whiskey and smoking while handling it. Why is that? Who is the nameless, mysterious girl who happens to turn up wherever Corso goes. And what's in a name, Corso? Corso can be understood as 'the path' – and where will it lead?

The girl is shown at the missing page that Corso received at the end of the movie in Portugal. The girl is shown on a creature with multiple heads, which could be the Whore of Babylon, who travels on a beast with seven heads.

Apart from these deliberate riddles, there are some movie details that raise the eyebrows of real bibliophiles. Corso visits many rare book collectors, but not one of them shows the merest respect for rare books:

they don't wear gloves when handling the books
they smoke in the vicinity of the books, even drop ashes on them
they dust and air the books daily (instead of using airconditioning and filters)
the books are studied on an unclean desk, on top of candy wrappers and a pack of cigarettes

(You can read more about how to store and handle valuable books .)

Speculation about the true nature of Corso and The Girl

Corso as Lucifer

It has been suggested that Corso is actually Lucifer himself, lost in the human realm. The nine engravings in the book is a popcorn trail so that he may find his way back. The Girl would be one of the "helpers" of Lucifer referred to by Balkan in the beginning of the movie.

"The Girl" as Lucifer or a minion thereof

A more common theory is that The Girl herself is Satan who comes upon being summoned so regularly by the unwitting worshippers (all three book collectors seem strangely disconnected - Baroness Kessler is writing a book on the Devil; Telfor's widow is part of the cult mentioned that uses the book and holds orgies to call the Devil; Balkan in the end is explicitly shown to believe that he has cracked some code to become one with Lucifer) however, Corso's initially unwitting accomplice in this charade is lured by the Devil into becoming just as obsessed with knowing Damien's secrets as the other three except that he is the one ultimately destined to unite with Him. The Girl always helps Corso because she is the Devil who wants him to decipher the clues and convert into one of her people. The two Portuguese booksellers apparently disappear after that one meeting with Corso, in fact the scaffolding crashes down behind him the moment he leaves the shop, perhaps they were minions of Lucifer planted there to just subtly nudge him in the right direction. During the scuffle with the platinum-haired black goon hired by Lady de San Martin The Girl seems to come flying down the stairs to his rescue and later in the chateau of San Martin when they get rid of him in the cellar when Corso brutally keeps hitting him (a violence we had not imagined him capable of before), indeed The Girl smiles eerily and remarks "I didn't know you had it in you" - a triumphant moment for the Devil in having succeeded in turning over a hitherto good if a bit dishonest man to his/er own side. The Girl's eyes of course are quite obviously shown to hold a spark of the sinister, the way they shine and hypnotise. Also her hair are red and she wears red socks, something that further corroborates this theory. Also the plates seem to mirror events that really happen, throughout the film. In the last plate, the Whore of Babylon or the Devil with a face just like The Girl's is astride a Hydra like creature while a castle is ablaze with some unearthly light in the distance behind her. Eventually, Corso and The Girl make love just in front of the blazing castle with The Girl/Devil astride a fully internally demonised Corso who, in the last shot, after the ultimate sexual submission to the Devil has finally obtained the metaphorical key into the ninth gate...the gate to Hell.

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