Life before life gets poignantly rendered in Nine Days

 

Will (Winston Duke) exists before existence. He's a figure in charge of determining which unborn souls get to go and have a life on Earth. His newest crop of souls includes Kane (Bill Skarsgard), Alexander (Tony Hale), and the always inquisitive Emma (Zazie Beets), among others. There's a lot of responsibility riding on Will's shoulders. He's well aware of that given how his living room is packed with TVs showing the lives of various souls on Earth. Through these screens, Will and the unborn souls get glimpses at various types of life on this planet. As Will proceeds to whittle down candidates to go live a life on Earth, the weight of his decision bears down on his being, particularly given his fixation on a tragedy that's befallen a human on Earth named Amanda.

Early on in Nine Days, I wasn't quite sure if this movie was going to be on my wavelength. The initial introductions to Will's life, lingering on those old-fashioned TVs playing out human lives through VHS tapes and his use of a polaroid camera to take pictures of potential, seemed to be too fixated on quirky retro details. The intentionally detached nature of Will, as well as the nebulous personalities of the unborn souls, also made it seem initially like there might be a lack of discernible humanity to root the high-concept premise in. I wasn't immediately turned off by Nine Days, but I was skeptical, there's no way around it. 

It wasn't long, though, before the movie won me over considerably. Details that initially seemed like shortcomings that created a barrier between the viewer and the story turned into far more powerful concepts in the context of the full movie. Will, for instance, quickly becomes a fascinatingly complicated creation. He puts on a detached air when interacting with the people around him, including Kyo (Benedict Wong), the closest thing he has to a friend. But writer/director Edson Oda quickly finds ways to inject nuance into him, such as his dedication to figuring out what's going on with Amanda or flashes of Emma uncovering flickers of a warm human within Will.

By the end of the story, Will didn't strike me as a stuffy person too aloof to be dramatically engaging. He was a person experiencing a relatable fear of what humanity is capable of. Oda allows this side of the character, as well as the distinct personalities of Kyo and Emma, to clash together so wonderfully through the restrained quality of the screenplay. Given how one of the lead characters ends up being connected to the world of the stage, it's no surprise that Nine Days ended up evoking one of the great playwrights. The sparseness of the dialogue-driven piece, the fact that the story is so often devoid of any sense of time or place, as well as the emphasis on the fragility of mortality, all of these details echo the works of Samuel Beckett. 

Thankfully, Oda's writing is strong enough to not just linger in the shadow of the greats, he's able to incorporate plenty of specific details that make sure Nine Days becomes something idiosyncratic. For example, the ramshackle nature of Will's home and the items within proves fascinating. Initially seemingly incorporated to justify retro technology that can inspire a nostalgia-informed boost of serotonin in the viewer, it's eventually utilized to quietly show Will's limits as a being. He's not a mystical deity who can conjure up anything out of his hand, he's just got to work with disposed of items from years past. A nearby junkyard (smartly never given an explanation) provides an aching visual symbol of the past and the source of all of Will's melancholy-laced possessions.

These trinkets also prove handy in showing how Will actually does care for the unborn souls he's tasked with managing. When one of these souls doesn't get chosen to go on to live on Earth, Will promises to recreate a special moment they want to relive for their last moment of existence. To recreate a day at the beach or bicycling around a European city, Will (usually with the aid of Kyo) uses tools that any of us could find in our attics to bring joy to somebody in their last moments. There's such visual creativity in these sequences, but there's also such potent emotion that helps to add layers to Will as a character. 

As a cherry on top, this protagonist also affords Winston Duke another chance to show his impressive range as a performer. After fully transforming between his roles in Black Panther and Us, Duke once again subverts expectations with his richly detailed turn as Will. Playing off him for much of the film is Benedict Wong in a sublime performance as Kyo. Duke and Wong have great chemistry together, informed by their vastly contrasting views of humanity, and the work delivered by both actors heavily informs some of the most poignant moments of Nine Days. Their work on-screen, among many other qualities, helped turn Nine Days from a movie I was initially adverse to into one I won't be able to stop thinking about for a while.