AFI Fest: (Second Opinion) "Nine Days"

AFI FEST (Virtual) Presented by Audi runs October 15th-22nd.

by Abe Friedtanzer 

The meaning of life is something many have sought to define over the course of history. One of the central problems with making an argument for what life means is that it’s only possible to observe it while living. It would theoretically be easier to appreciate what life offers in some sort of separate space or place. That’s part of the premise of Nine Days, which made its world premiere back in January at Sundance and is now screening at AFI Fest.

Will (Winston Duke) is a man who was once alive. Now, he sits in a house surrounded by nothing in a desert watching old-fashioned TV screens and rewinding VHS tapes. He is watching people’s lives, apparently recorded from their perspectives...

When one woman is killed in a car crash on the way to a recital, Will is forced to interview candidates to be her replacement: for the chance to be alive.

A central tenet of science fiction or fantasy movies is that things are how they are, regardless of how difficult it might be to believe that it’s real. There isn’t always an explanation for technological developments or supernatural events, and that may frustrate some viewers. Accepting something as fact when there’s nothing to support its existence can make or break the experience of watching a film. 

 

Murtada saw and reviewed this film at Sundance (as did I) and wasn’t impressed at all. He found its attempts to be profound very lacking, and I can see how he didn’t connect to the approach. For me, however, this film was a wondrous speculative trip, to think about the cases we all might make for why we deserve the chance to be alive without truly grasping what that could feel like.

This is the first feature film from writer-director Edson Oda, who conjures up a bare staging area with dated technology that might serve as a preview of the world of the living for the candidates who knock at the door to talk to their stoic interviewer. Duke, a familiar face from Black Panther and Us, plays the part well, and the way that he interacts with the rest of the ensemble makes their conversations all the more poignant. Tony Hale and Zazie Beetz make for particularly compelling contenders, and Benedict Wong shows another side of this process as Kyo, a more expressive peer of Will’s whose desired qualifications for hiring would surely look very different. 

What still resonates with me months after seeing this film are the scenes in which the seemingly emotionless Will demonstrates that he absolutely knows the power of memory. Over the course of the nine days he has to make a choice, he is forced to cut some of the possibilities loose. Aware that they will simply disappear shortly after he tells them, Will is nonetheless determined to fulfill for each of them a powerful moment they witnessed in someone else’s life, making it feel as real as he can. He knows that, in addition to not being present in whatever his immediate world is, they won’t exist at all, but he still believes that experience matters. 

It’s difficult to convey the singular energy of this film and the way that it tackles this complex idea. It won’t feel authentic or moving to everyone, but I would highly recommend an immersion in this film’s intellectual and theoretical space. It’s a unique and inventive approach to something all of us, to a degree, take for granted.

Nine Days is screening virtually at AFI Fest and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on January 22nd, 2021 in time for Oscar eligibility.