The ninth gate - 1999

I’m not a fan. It was really slow but for a while it had me interested, but not too much, and there was no character or scene that really got me. 

Johnny Depp plays Corso, a man who deals in rare ancient books, let’s say it he’s a jerk who only cares about money and is happy to trick people buying precious books at a low price. He is hired by Balkan for a special mission. At first he’s not too interested in working for him, but he likes the amount of money that Balkan is willing to pay. 

Balkan shows him a rare book on the devil, and says that there are only three in the world, and tells him that he thinks only one of them is authentic and wants him to take a look at the other two and confirm that his copy is the real one. 

The only funny scene is when Corso attends Balkan’s lesson (or something) and falls asleep and when he wakes him up he only says “did I snore?”.

Balkan apparently acquired the book right before the previous owner (or better, the husband of the owner) killed himself. She seduces him to try and get the book back, but Corso had given it to a friend (the only friend shown in the movie), a bookstore owner. When he goes to take the book back, he finds that the man has been killed and posed like one of the pictures in the book, hanging upside down by a foot. He retrieves the book and goes away.  He starts being scared but keeps at it.

He goes to Spain first. The brothers who sold it to the woman made him notice that some pictures are signed by the author he knew about, but three of them are signed LCF as in Lucifer. 

He saw a blond woman with green eyes at Balkan’s conference, sees her again now on the train. 

Corso finds the man who owns the second copy, and when he studies that book he sees that there are indeed three drawings marked Lcf, but not the same three. He tells everything to Balkan, and next thing you know the old man is killed, his book burned, but only after someone stole the Lcf drawings. He meets again ‘green eyes’ at the hotel. Early in the morning she wakes him up and takes him back to the book owner, where he finds out the man was killed. They travel together to France. He goes to meet the a famous rare book collector, she has the only other copy of the book. She throws him out when she learns that he works for Balkan, but later he gets her interested when he explains to her about the copies differences. While he’s studying the book, finding out that the three drawing signed Lcf, no surprise here, are the three remaining (nine pictures in total, three Lcf ones in three books), he’s knocked out and when he comes to, the woman has been killed.

He is afraid of a man following him, and tries to avoid him, but later that man attacks him (we’ll see that he’s working for the woman that wants the book back). They fight a bit and ‘green eyes’ comes to help him. He’s clearly not good in this kind of things, but she seems to barely make an effort. And we see that she doesn’t ‘go downstairs’ like normal people, she ‘floats’ down to him. Thinking it’s too dangerous to carry the book with him, he hides it in the hotel room. When he comes back after the old lady died, he finds the book gone, stolen. That woman succeeded in getting it back.

Green eyes goes with him to get the book back, following the woman to her house in a small village. She’s part of a cult, when they wear black robes and read from that book, have lots of sex and think that the devil will give them everything. The man who attacked him is supposed to kill them, but he’s not really good at this stuff since someone like Corso can trick him and overpower him so easily. Corso makes him fall down the stairs, takes his gun and keeps hitting him (just badly injured or dead? don’t know.). Green eyes stares at him with a very interested smile. I had thought for a moment she might be some kind of guardian angel, there to protect him, although this didn’t really seem an accurate description for her, but now her look was clearly different, she enjoyed watching him beat the man up in a rage, and says “I didn’t know you had it in you”.

He was looking for a subtle way to get the book back, but Balkan walks boldly in and says that he’s the only one who deserves the book and just takes it, and when she tries to oppose him, he strangles her in front of lots of people. Corso wants to stop him, but green eyes floats in a hurry and stops him, and her excuse is that now lots of people saw Balkan kill a woman, so Corso is freed of all suspicions for the other deaths... a stupid excuse, I’d rather think she didn’t want to save her, point.

(I mean, was he ever suspected for those deaths? the fact that Balkan killed this one, does automatically mean he killed the others? where are the proofs? nobody saw him near them. And even if all that was ok, Balkan killing her frees him of all suspicions... are you telling me that all those grown up people who came naked covered only in a black robe to read from a book on the devil and have an orgy and worship the devil, those people would step up and say, we saw him killing her, we were there?? It’s all nonsense. I think she wanted him to kill her and that’s it.)

He follows Balkan’s trail to a ruined castle, like the one in the drawings, and sees that he has all the nine pictures. Balkan says he understands how it works and will now summon the devil, or something, but it doesn’t work. Balkan dies in the fire he set himself, Corso gets out, green eyes is there waiting, she seduces him, then he drives the two of them away. She explains to him that Balkan failed because one of the pictures he had was fake. Corso asks for it, says he wants it. When they stop for gas she goes away, leaving a message for him. He goes back to the brothers’ shop, now closed, and finds the missing pictures. The last scene shows Corso walking towards the castle, and the door opens by itself upon his arrival.

So what, he was seduced by the devil and went through the ninth gate... and then what? nobody knows. Why so much trouble to get him there, to seduce him, what was so special about him?

He was someone who didn’t believe in anything but money, there’s lots of people like that.