'Nine Days': Ethereal and evocative film about the meaning of life
Winston Duke stars in 'Nine Days,' Edson Oda's knockout feature debut about a man tasked with interviewing souls for the chance to be sent out into life.
By Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter
Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz in 'Nine Days'
It’s a rare occasion when a first-time filmmaker embraces the metaphysical, and rarer still when said director does so without embarrassing pretentiousness, but Edson Oda thinks big and pulls it off in 'Nine Days'. Stunningly crafted and concerned with nothing less than who deserves a space on planet Earth, this is a carefully thought-out original creation: a one-of-a-kind work that announces a significant talent.
A Brazilian-born USC graduate who has directed numerous corporate projects and music videos, Oda shows from the first scene that he has a great eye for fashioning images. What he does with his talent places him in a rarified zone where art-making and philosophical speculation merge, and where adventurous young viewers will make a point of finding it.
Zazie Beetz in Nine Days
Unspecific religious vibrations course through the proceedings, which are set in a handsome old house in the desert bedecked with all manner of video and other electrical equipment. The imposing man in charge, Will (Winston Duke), helped at times by older colleague Kyo (Benedict Wong), has an interesting job: deciding who will be born and sent out into whatever exists beyond the desert. What authority gave him this task is not stated.
There is no real-world context for this method of propagating the species, no known criteria, no societal, political or geographic backdrop to any of it. But as one soul dies, another must be admitted to the realm of the living, with Will as the arbiter. Physically powerful (Duke played M’Baku in Black Panther), he is also mentally dexterous and intimidating; it will take someone special to meet this judge’s approval and pass go.
It can’t be said that the five aspirants to be born have overwhelmingly impressive credentials, and Will is both well prepared and not disposed to make it easy for them. There are merciless challenges to be met, questions to be answered, tasks to be mastered. To be born is a great privilege, not a right, and one by one they must convince Will of their worth or face the far more likely prospect of never being born. It’s pretty clear from the start, inevitably — Will settles his attention on the one good prospect who’s been there all along, Emma (the irrepressible Zazie Beetz).
Winston Duke and Bill Skarsgård in Nine Days.
The young woman’s alert, life-embracing attitude is much the antithesis of Will’s challenging, gate-keeper personality, enough so that it begins to unnerve him. There is no sexual component to the relationship — this is not a realm in which sexuality ever rears its head — and yet Emma’s presence unsettles Will to no end; it represents a tangible threat to the boss’ authority and the system of advancement into the real world that he has refined and implemented.
'Nine Days' distinguishes itself in a way that very few films do today, not just in the sense of creating a unique world to operate within, complete with hierarchies and gizmos and heroes and villains — countless sci-fi/fantasy films do that — but by fashioning a niche zone of limited known range in which the unborn must demonstrate why they deserve to be born. It’s a disturbing notion in a good way, a provocative one that suggests that you have to deserve your right to live in the world.