A big, sprawling ensemble in which the events leading up to and following a drug deal are told from three different points of view, Go crash-landed in 1999. Starring Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Jay Mohr and Timothy Olyphant, among others, it was a perfect marriage of sorts between the stuttering, alternately wry and flippant style of screenwriter John August (who would go on to slave over the Charlie’s Angels films and pen a trio of movies for Tim Burton, including Big Fish) and the kinetic, hipster visual sense of director Doug Liman (who would go on to helm the first installment of the Bourne franchise). Even if one didn’t like the film, I think they’d concede that it felt of a piece in its construction. There wasn’t a jarring, at-odds collusion of visions; Go was sleek and lupine, if not exactly a box office hit.
The Nines, loosely retains the same triptych structure as Go, as well as the same sort of healthy disregard for purely linear pleasantries. The Nines is also notable because it’s August’s feature debut behind the camera. Unlike the thematically timid, familiar stories of half measures that many a writer make for their directorial debuts — more intimately scaled movies that feel like reaches across the table for salt and pepper — August’s The Nines is, psychologically speaking, a big, freewheeling affair, stuffed back within the confines of a tightly framed story.
Featuring three actors playing three parts apiece in three different stories — roles that, apart from their place within discrete narratives, may or may not have something to do with one another — The Nines could be described as being about the concentric circles of creativity, and getting lost in the hazy mist of formation and development, both personally and professionally, spiritually and emotionally. It’s about creation and responsibility, and where those ideas overlap and end. Confused? We haven’t even started yet.
The film’s first strand, dubbed “The Prisoner,” tells the story of a troubled actor, Gary (Ryan Reynolds), the hunky star of a small screen cop show, who goes on a boozy binge and finds himself placed under house arrest, with a chipper junior publicist Margaret (Melissa McCarthy) and disillusioned next-door neighbor Sarah (Hope Davis, above right) as his only links to the outside world. Eventually, Gary comes to wonder whether one or both women are deceiving him about the nature of his incarnation.
“Reality Television,” the movie’s second segment, charts the production of a half-hour episode of a Project Greenlight-type show tracking the creative progress of a network television drama making its way through pilot season. Having shot the series opener, writer-creator Gavin (Reynolds) faces some tough post-production hurdles and challenges from development executive Susan (Davis) about the suitability of his best friend and lead actress (McCarthy, playing a same-named iteration of herself).
Finally, in “Knowing,” an acclaimed videogame designer, Gabriel (Reynolds), faces car trouble deep in the woods. Leaving behind his wife Mary (McCarthy) and mute daughter (Elle Fanning) to track down help, Gabriel runs into Sierra (Davis), who regards him suspiciously at first, but then slowly reveals that she knows more about him than she was initially letting on.
In the film’s press notes, August talks about The Nines being “a question, not an answer” — that its three sections are deliberately incongruous, overlapping rather than snapping together neatly. Despite, or maybe because of this tack, The Nines doesn’t really cohere in a meaningful way; to call it too cute by half would be terse, but also not at all inaccurate. The casting of Reynolds, Davis and McCarthy give August a home run, and he additionally has an undeniable touch with dialogue, finding artful ways for his characters to say things in a manner that imparts both necessary information and true personality. But the movie, never moving much beyond the feelings it generates solely in the moment, doesn’t work one’s id into a tizzy in the same manner that David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or François Ozon’s Swimming Pool, two films that bear loose association, do, and its ending induces only sort of a shrug. If songs could sire movies, Brit pop band James’ “Born of Frustration” would be the father of The Nines. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here. (Newmarket, R, 102 minutes)