Rating: A
What does it mean, to live?
We are, each of us, thrust into a world that feels, so often, daunting. The daily turmoil of mere existence feels so much like swimming in chaotic waters. Our lives, beset by the banalities of our day to day and the regrets of past mistakes and the knowledge of impending entropy, lived as best we can, but the constant assault of turmoil, strife, and uncertainty wreaks its havoc.
It’s hard to live. So hard that we forget that it is also beautiful. We forget that our pains aren’t just dark mirrors of our joys, but also their complements, the contrasting flavor that serves to actualize the experience, to make this act, the simple act of being, one of almost incomprehensible, cosmic beauty.
Nine Days, the feature debut from writer/director Edson Oda, exists in the crossroads where pain and joy, darkness and beauty, fear and light intersect to form the art of what we think of as living. It is a stunning meditation not just on the small joys but the giant pains that swirl in that great abyss of existence.
Rarely have I found a film that so moved me with so little. Oda has crafted a glorious poem of a film that forces a head on collision between light and dark to remind us that life, all of it, is glorious. In Nine Days, Oda imagines a place before life, where souls compete for the job of existing. But what does that mean? What, even, is life?
Will (Winston Duke) thinks he knows. Himself formally a living person, he spends his afterlife watching the lives of new souls as they go through earth. When a soul he was particularly attached meets a sudden end, it is upon him to choose between five new souls for their own chance at life. One soul in particular, Emma (Zazie Beetz) challenges everything Will thinks he knows about himself, his place, and what it means to be alive.
There’s so much more to Nine Days that any synopsis can capture, though in broad strokes the above is not inaccurate. Oda’s film is something of a koan, a mystery meant to unravel what we think we know about the experience of being alive. Duke and Beetz present us with two opposing forces, each perhaps too invested in their own views to fully understand all the wonders of living.
Backed by a stellar supporting cast that includes Benedict Wong, Bill Skarsgard, Tony Hale, and Arianna Ortiz, Duke and Beetz dance Oda’s delicate waltz in a delicious back and forth. Though Will’s past is never outright explored, Oda brilliantly alludes to the pains of his life that made him what he is in his afterlife. Beetz’s contrast complements it well, with the two becoming something of a yin and yang, encompassing all that is good and bad about life.
Through them we’re reminded that all of it is still life. Our tears do not negate our smiles. Our tribulations do not diminish our peace. Rather, they each play an important role in formulating the intricacies of our existence. Nine Days is a stunner of a cinematic experience, filled with life affirming emotion and powered by the talented eye of Oda. By the end we’re reminded that, no matter what life is, it’s always worth living, even and perhaps especially when it’s at its darkest.
Nine Days is now playing in theaters.
