Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter: Ninth Gate (1999)
Roman Polanski focuses on the devil worship but leaves the literary discussions of the novel behind
In Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby the Antichrist wants to be a daddy, and manipulates everyone around innocent, elfin Rosemary Woodhouse to make her his baby mama. In The Ninth Gate (1999), Polanski is once again obsessed with the Devil and those who worship him. The movie, based on the bestselling 1993 novel El Club Dumas (The Club Dumas) by Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte. A novel about an antiquarian bookseller’s quest for a tome that supposedly allows the reader to summon the devil, the book discourses on everything from demonology to 19th century serialized fiction. Polanski’s film, however is less interested in literature and far more interested in satanic covens. The result is a loose adaptation that dispenses with the novel’s literary pedigree and becomes a slow, torturously gothic journey into cults and covens and all other cinematic tropes of film Satanism.
The Story
Lucas Corso, an expert in antiquarian books, is summoned to Toledo by Borja, a famous and eccentric collector who thinks he might have a copy of Of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, a imaginary book whose author was burned at the stake for heresy. Borja knows there are that two other copies exist, and since only one can be authentic, he hires Corso to find the other two and acquire the legitimate one. Corso, who is also working on authenticating a previously unknown version of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, agrees. While hunted by widow of the draft’s previous owner, Corso tracks down the owners of other two copies of Nine Doors, who later end up dead. In a castle, he encounters a mysterious group obsessed with the draft and a mysterious woman who helps him avoid captures. When Corso realizes that all three copies contain instructions to summon the Devil, he confronts Borja — only to realize that things are not what they seem.
The Adaptation
Perez-Reverte’s novel is a feast for book lovers. Not only does the plot center on antiquarian books and classic novels, but it also references more than fifty other real novels and nearly 30 imaginary titles. The world of books has never been so gothic and lusciously depicted; it is a world of both obsession and intense knowldge; the world of book collectors is one of searching for intellectual treasure. The novel is filled with eccentric, memorable characters — deposed nobility who sold all their possessions to acquire a rare books, a club of wealthy fans (The Club Dumas) demanding to see Corso’s draft of the novel, a mysterious blond woman who beats up anyone who messes with Corso and claims to be an angel. While they book’s plots do run out of steam towards the end, it is essentially mystery about our own love of great literature.
The movie, however, is far darker than the novel and uninterested in books except as way to access the supernatural. Polanski dispenses entirely with The Club Dumas and replaces them with the usual sexually decadent and disaffectedly wealthy Satanic coven, (perhaps the same debauched clan from the orgy scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut; one suspects the same group rents themselves out for these scenes). Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is an amoral, sexy bookseller who is hired by wealthy collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to compare his copy of The Nine Doors to the other two books. Along the way, Corso lends the book to a bookshop owner friend, who is later found hanged. He is seduced by Liana (Lena Olin), the widow of the man who sold Balkan the book and then hunted by her for refusing to hand it over. Corso wanders through Europe trying to find the other copies of The Nine Doors, followed by “The Girl” (Emmanuelle Seigner) who operates partly as a bodyguard and guide — though she might also be the Devil herself.
The main difference between the book and the movie is, of course, the absence of any reference to the draft of The Three Musketeers that Corso is trying to authenticate. Polanski might have been inspired enough by Perez-Reverte’s novel to create a beautiful world full of luscious old mansions that practically scream “old Europe.” Both Depp and Langella are well cast, and the movie does have a more coherent plot than the novel, which digresses often into various theories and leaves the reader hanging. But for the most part, Polanski’s insistence on taking the satanism and demonology seriously fall flat and are often unintentionally hilarious. As Depp has sex with The Girl with a flaming castle in the backdrop, he triumphs by….managing to find a way through the Gates of Hell. In the book, Borja is left with his obsession — linking the nine engravings from the book — which are seen mostly as delusion. But in the film, the supernatural, rather than the literary, is real.
Polanski is still a master of uneasy tension, but reduces The Club Dumas to a cross between The Omen and The Bourne Identity. The intricacy of The Club Dumas doesn’t lend itself easily to film — it’s always been difficult making a movie about our love of books — but Polanski’s movie is so centered around devil worship that the literature hardly matters. In the final scenes, as Balkan pulls the papers out of all three copies of the supposedly invaluable Nine Doors, it’s hard not to feel this is symbolic of Polanski’s approach to adaptation. At the end of The Club Dumas, Corso walks away from his boss and drives off with a beautiful girl, highlighting the absurdity and failure of Borja’s desires. But the movie, in trying to scare us with the Devil, only makes itself (and its beautiful cinematography) ridiculous. An adaptation of The Club Dumas could have been an engaging gothic tale about our centuries-old fascination with the occult and literature. Instead, Polanski’s decision to literally play Devil’s advocate
