The Ninth Gate

Hey guys, the purpose of me writing this blog is to watch those movies that have not widely reached the global audiences or yourself, even if you are a terrific movie-lover and provide you with a synopsis thereby stimulating your interest into the movie. Many a movie is not seen just because we do not like its poster or the hero, or due to lack or abundances of erotic scenes or due to a hell lot of violence. Here's one of the movies, may be I’ll call an underrated one with not so much of wide-spread audience. Johnny Depp has given his performance, as usual(!) but the movie is not about his performance but about the type of role that he has taken. The role fascinated me to write a review, else I wouldn’t have been. The movie's name is: The Ninth Gate - released in 1999 based on the novel "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and is directed by one of the prolific directors in Hollywood, Roman Polanski.

Johnny (Dean Corso) plays the role of a New York book-authenticator, or to be precise, a rare book dealer who validates the authenticity of the books and provides an estimated price of the book if sold or auctioned. The movie opens with the scene of a middle-aged man, Tefler hastily scribbling something on a paper and hanging himself on to the ceiling lights. After quite sometime with scenes moving with Corso's business at a house estimating few books and at his store, the movie gets into its real business. Corso is called by Balkan, a history professor at a university to validate his copy (one of the three books) of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, written by Aristide Torchia in the 17th century who was burnt alive with his works allegedly having dealt mainly with the raise of devil, Satan on his three books. Balkan suspects the genuineness of his copy and sends Corso to investigate the other 2 copies which are in Portugal and Spain. As a payment, he provides a blank, signed check to him. (Pinch==>Boy-o-boy! a blank check and a trip to Europe! What else you need on earth?).

Corso takes the book and meets Mrs.Tefler and asks her if she knew anything about the book. Also says that Tefler sold the book to Balkan and he is authenticating it. She says that her husband was restless during his last days and shows the place where he hung himself. Corso leaves the place and keeps the book in his store and goes home where Mrs.Tefler again makes her appearance. She has sex with him on a failed attempt to get the book. When Corso returns to his bookshop, he sees his friend murdered in a strange position - hanging upside down with a leg folding half way! Confused, Corso tries to back-up from the task but Balkan offers him to pay more money.

Corso leaves to Portugal and checks-in at a hotel, where he sees a mysterious lady following him wherever he goes and when he tries to reach out to her, she disappears (Pinch==>Come on Corso, All ladies are like this!!) On asking she introduces herself as something like a student (Pinch==>Now.. what do you mean by 'something like a student'??!!) The 2 book owners get murdered after he investigates those books. Balkan keeps on ringing out Corso wherever he goes and maintains a low profile.

The mysterious lady exhibits supernatural capabilities when Corso is attacked a couple of times by a strange man in an attempt to steal the book from him. To avoid such attacks, Corso keeps the book in his hotel room in a hidden place. He finds that each of the three books had 3 clues in them, making it 9 clues for the procedure to raise the Devil. After his long day of investigations, when he returns home, he finds the book stolen from the room! On checking at the reception, he comes to know that Mrs.Tefler has taken it with the strange man giving her company. He sees Mrs.Tefler moving in a car ahead of him.

The mysterious lady and Corso get set into a car and follow them and reach a building where some kind of a regular, periodic ritual is conducted, believed to raise the Devil. Both Corso and the lady get into the building and disguise themselves in weird clothes as many other men did. All of a sudden, Balkan makes his presence and kills Mrs.Tefler and snatches the book from her. He flees to a nearby fort and arranges the 9 pages got from the 3 books in the order it has to be and prepares to his start the ritual of raising the Devil. Corso comes over there but Balkan hits him down with his gun and does the ritual. The ritual was to set himself on fire after telling some mantras kind of stuff. But the attempt fails and Balkan dies engulfed in fire. Corso, regains strength and takes the pages on the table and runs out of the fort where he sees the mysterious lady standing by his car. She has sex with him (Pinch==>a hot scene dude!!) exhibiting some kind of weirdness in her eyes. The next morning when both drive together in the car, Corso asks her why Balkan died even though he did arrange the pages correctly and also did the ritual properly. The lady says that the 9th page was a fake one and the real page is in CENIZA brother's shop where he finds the final 9th page with an engraving very similar to the mysterious lady, thereby showing the real way to raise the devil and to the immortality of the raiser, Corso.

The movie ends with this scene. The ending is confusing and I think that is the reason for this movie not doing a great deal at the box office. There is no explanation for who that woman was? Was she a guardian angel of Corso? Then why is she having sex with him?? Do angels have sex? Well that is another controversy.. I don’t want to go into that. What happens to Corso when he goes into the fort with so much of shining light? What does he interpret on the Ninth page that he gets from the Ceniza brother's shop? All these questions were the answers for the not-well-doing of the movie. May be the director did not want to explain such stuff and inspire anyone of the rituals :-) Already religion has lot of complications because of us and may be he didn’t want to add more spice to it :-)

Well that’s it for now guys! You can watch the better quality of movie in http://www.wisevid.com/view_video.php?viewkey=da243ffddf161ca71275# , directed from http://www.watch-movies-links.net , an authentic website that allows online streaming of a hell lot of movies.

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