Movies are made to be a lot of things. They can be quiet, introspective, thoughtful stories that deal in relationships and philosophy, tense tales of murder and mystery, struggles over life and property on a wild frontier. One of the things they do best is to serve as a setting for a spectacle, big and splashy, full of color and excitement, sometimes rather messy but always bringing entertainment to the filmmaker's world, and to ours.
"Nine" is a great spectacle; I found it exciting, musically and choreographically delicious, filled with beautiful people in showing off their talent. It's a fascinating contrast with another of this holiday season's big movies, "Avatar," also a spectacle but with so much emphasis on "Look at me, I'm a spectacle!" that it's all about special effects and without any interest in such important elements as story or acting.
"Nine" is a cinematic version of the play of the same name; both pay tribute to a 1963 movie, "8 1/2," written by Federico Fellini and with Marcello Mastroianni as the libidinous genius, Guido Contini, surrounded by beautiful women like Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee. Twenty years later, Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit turned it into a Broadway musical with Raul Julia, Karen Akers, Anita Morris and Liliane Montevecchi. Twenty years after that, it was revived with a cast led by Antonio Banderas, Mary Stuart Masterson, Jane Krakowski and Chita Rivera. And now, another movie, directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, with a screenplay by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella.
Daniel Day-Lewis, a consummate actor with Oscars for "My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood," is the power-hungry Guido, his lusts different in target but not in intensity from those of the oil wildcatter, Daniel Plainview. Watching him in a very different role, realizing the range that he can show, is a fascinating experience.
He portrays a film director, with all the ego that goes with the territory, and he's surrounded by women. As in all the earlier versions, they are beautiful and love him deeply, but they want to take as well as give. Five of them have won Academy Awards, led by the ageless beauty (she's 75), Sophia Loren, who won in 1960, before most of the rest of the cast was born. She's his mother, with all the conflicts that role can bring. Other Oscar winners include Marion Cotillard, his long-suffering and most put-upon wife, Luisa; Penelope Cruz as his mistress, Carla. Nicole Kidman is a Nordic ice princess; and Judi Dench is his costume designer and confidant, with whom he shares all his problems. Other women in the mix are Kate Hudson as a reporter for Vogue trying to interview Guido, and Stacy Ferguson, better known as Fergie, as Saraghina, the leading prostitute in the town where he grew up.
Day-Lewis' interaction with this septet is well done; the actor almost inhabits a different character for each relationship, and the women are excellent, too, with Dench hitting a high spot with her song, "Folies Bergere."
Marshall's choreography is splendid, exciting, but his direction is often on the sloppy side, as if he thought that singing and dancing would be enough. Unfortunately, they aren't.
And yet, watching beauty and talent sing and dance is enough to make "Nine" an enjoyable experience.
At multiple locations.
-Joe