***There are SO many movies available to watch on Netflix instant streaming service. A good portion of these movies are not very well known and it can be difficult to sift through the good ones and bad ones. As a service to my readers, I will use this new column “Navigating Netflix” to give reviews to movies I watch***
"Everything that is, is because of you. And if that's all there is, that's enough."
For the first Hour and 20 minutes of “The Nines” I thought the movie was about something very different then it ended up being about. The last 20 minutes of the movie made it clear that I had an incorrect impression about what I was watching. While I still maintain that what I thought I was watching would have made for a slightly better movie, lets examine what I actually saw.
The Nines is a movie that is broken up into 3 short intertwining stories. Each story is primarily made up of 3 characters, always portrayed by Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy and Hope Davis. The first story revolves around Gary, and actor who gets himself sentenced to house arrest after a drug induced bender, Margret(McCarthy) his publicist, and Sarah (Davis) a neighbor. The second story revolves around a reality show follow Gavin, a TV writer. Melissa (McCarthy) is the actress he want to cast in the pilot for his new show and Davis plays Susan, a television executive. The last story focuses around Gabriel, his wife Mary and a stranger named Sierra that they meet while out on a family day. Each story follows a similar pattern in which things slowly start to go wrong for Gary/Gavin/Gabriel and at the point where he is about to completely lose it, we move on to the next story. In each story, the character that Hope Davis is playing is trying to keep Gary/Gavin/Gabriel away from whatever character Melissa McCarthy is playing. Each story also relies heavily on the repetitive use of the number 9 which starts to alarm the male lead.
Well now that we got that confusing part out of the way, what did I think this movie was about? And what did it actually turn out to be about? Well I had originally thought the movie was about alternate realities and how they all exist at the same time with out us knowing what the alternate versions of ourselves are doing. In all three stories, Reynolds character starts seeing small aspects of the other stories slowly bleeding into his life. I have always been fascinated with the idea that the world we are in now is just one of many simultaneous existences that are going on. It seemed like the movie was getting to the point that when these realities begin to mix is when a person is forced to deal with the idea of insanity.
This movie, however, had much grander aspirations then just that. Here is what I took from it. Ryan Reynolds characters are not human. They are some God-like creator. We know he is not actually god because as we are told, God is a 10, and Gary/Gavin/Gabriel (I’ll call him G from here on out) is a 9. And as someone who is a 9 but not perfect enough to be God, a 10, he is not infallible. G becomes so consumed by the world and the people that he creates, that he becomes consumed in them, not able to realize that he can not stay in these worlds because he is not a human part of them. Still with me? Good.
The movie is REALLY well acted. All 3 actors, especially Reynolds, tackle the 3 separate roles head on, and bring enough difference and subtlety to each person that they are playing, that you often forget that you are watching the same actors just portraying different people. And I cant say I was ever really bored. I usually really love movies that are really ambiguous and left to interpretation. But there is such a thing as reaching a little to high. I think this movie may have done that because in the end, It can really mean anything you want it to mean
The whole thing I think is somewhat of an allegory for the experiences of the writer, being so involved in his own creation that real and fiction became somewhat blurred. Like G in "The Nines", he ultimately wants the world to be perfect for all these characters he's created, which is like what a writer experiences. I suppose you could also say that this movie is an allegory for anyone who becomes obsessed with some kind of false world like perhaps a gamer, or a game designer, or anyone who creates things. I think it is really genius that in G makes himself a creator of other worlds even in his own creation. Anyways, besides that aspect it is also just a really interesting idea to think that perhaps our own reality is not the ultimate reality, and just some creation of which there are many different versions, and we're just a tiny little speck in the whole “everything"
In the end, I was definitely very entertained by this movie. It had the courage to reach higher then most movies, and also had the courage to be different. Ultimately I think the end my be a little to grandiose and ambivalent for a lot of people, and feel that they missed out on a chance to be an amazing movie about alternate realities converging, but it is a movie I would absolutely recommend watching. At worst, it will give you and your friends something to talk about.
Rating: 7.5 out 10
