The 9th Gate (1999) - Full Movie Link & Thoughts

 

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     It's no secret I'm a huge fan of The Club Dumas and The 9th Gate. See previous unconnected thoughts here, and a couple of other random posts. Some quick history with the book and the movie; I read the book first, it was a gift from a girlfriend and she thought I would like it. The movie came out in 1999, and because news and internet was slow and shitty and I was disconnected from the world, I had no clue the movie and the book were connected in any way. I didn't see a trailer on the E! Channel like I normally would after Talk Soup to clue me in, and that was almost exclusively the way I would have known or seen it.

One to two packs of Pall Malls a day.

   I identified with Lucas Corso ('Dean' in Movie); I smoked a pack a day, collected rare books of different types and had a similar cavalier attitude about life in general. Before the movie existed, I was obsessed with reading anything from Arturo Perez-Reverte's catalog, and though I thought they were all great books, I never liked them as much as Dumas. It was not the first book to really grab me, but it was of the few. I was at a time in my life when 18 year old me was exclusively reading Science Fiction, and this was a huge change for me which led me down the path of the likes of Dan Brown and Umberto Eco. It was a.. witty person's summer reading, and you didn't have to get all the literary references to enjoy it. 

There were... some changes.

    I finally watched the movie after I realized what it was, and rented it from Blockbuster. Initially I was thrilled, until I realized right away that there was some really extreme changes from the book, and why they could not call the movie The Club Dumas. The Dumas connection was removed from the movie, and the roles of several characters have been swapped and moved around to the point where I had to unlearn the book and just enjoy the movie for what it was. The opening of the movie, it shows a young-ish Depp buying some early Three Musketeers books, and scamming them, being quite the con-artist as in the book. Seeing a Dumas reference, I thought.. Oh shit! This is going to be super faithful. If I squinted hard enough, Depp looked the part of a 40's Lucas Corso.

This is not the worst of endings.

    All doubts cast aside, I found myself really enjoying the movie. I did miss the Dumas connection, but even in the book, it turned out that Dumas manuscript had nothing to do with the central plot, and was just a bundle of crazy coincidences and distractions. The book ends in a very serene yet grotesque way, with "Irene" or "The Girl" listening to Borja burning alive inside the building, leaving you to believe that summoning the devil didn't work after all. Corso thinks to himself, it didn't work because the Ceniza brothers most likely forged the book plates after all, and off he goes. No devil, no doors, no gates. I very much like the liberties taken in the movie to visualize the woodcuts from the book, that it's the girl in the final correct cut, and going a step further, finding the page at the Ceniza brothers business and entering the gate himself. Admittedly, I would have like it better if he left with the girl, but that was explained as she left the clue on his windshield. I digress. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, watch the movie, read the book, post some comments. It would make me happy.