Nine

Nine, the new musical from Chicago director Rob Marshall, begins with a press conference at which Italian director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) interprets Robert Bresson’s famous statement on the ephemeral quality of film from the filmmaker’s perspective: “My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper, is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on the screen, come to life again like flowers in water.” It’s an impressive statement, and for Guido Contini it’s a copout, a nifty way to avoid facts.

Contini is a director in crisis. The sets have been built for his new film, and the cast is being assembled, but he hasn’t written a word of the script.  To make matters worse, he has no inspiration, and his only preoccupations are the women in his life.  His appearance at the press conference is the first in a series of evasions that Contini stages as the poorly rigged structure of his life crumbles around him.

Nine is an adaptation of the 1982 Broadway stage musical of the same name, which itself was adapted from Federico Fellini’s film 81/2.  Fellini celebrated and explored intangible, dreamlike near-realities in his films, and his particular cinematic universe would be perfect for the musical genre.  Unfortunately, Marshall avoids Fellini’s 81/2 to an almost alarming degree, and that avoidance is one of only a few strong directorial choices in Nine.  Another choice was to stage all of the musical numbers on the soundstage hosting Contini’s half-built set.  The soundstage is an area where Contini can escape into honesty, where the brutality of his imagination is refreshing. It is here that Nine most closely resembles Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz—a film that shares much more with 81/2 than than Nine. Despite all internal and external complications, Marshall can’t seem to figure out how to effectively maneuver Contini’s internal rhapsodies into the external emotional world of the film.

Other than Marshall’s solution to the “why do they sing?” problem, and the shying away from Fellini, very little in Nine is presented with a steady hand.  The film cuts back and forth between black-and-white and color photography to little effect, and every number is staged as a showstopper, which only assures that none of them is. Marshall is an excellent choreographer, and his talent seeps over into staging of nonmusical scenes, but that talent fails to support the entire film.  It is fun to see the stars displayed throughout the film, in a reviewlike fashion, and there is fascinating subtle suspense that builds in the long anticipation of Claudia Jenssen’s (Nicole Kidman's) arrival. Fergie’s appearance as Saraghina, the influential prostitute from Contini’s childhood, is surprisingly good; she gained twenty pounds for the role and makes a sultry and salty impression.  But, unfortunately, Kate Hudson’s turn as an American journalist with the new song “Cinema Italiano” is far worse.  The number suffers from weak songwriting and the regrettable choice to cut away from black-and-white to color stock, a choice that only reveals how easily high-contrast images can be transformed into something reminiscent of a typical Britney Spears music video.  The song is briefly redeemed because Contini appears somewhat repulsed by it but then pops up again over the end credits.

During the entire production Nine has a "more is more" attitude, which tellingly is Contini’s central flaw as a man and as an artist.  The strength of the cast, the scope of the film, and the stylistic excesses cannot mask the shortcomings within the film. Marshall, instead of always searching for a way to make the film catchier and more impressive, should have taken another proverbial statement from Bresson to heart, “Not to use two violins when one is enough.”

                                          Thaddeus Ruzicka