The magical meets the methodical in Edson Oda’s spellbinding Nine Days. Tasked with an extraordinary duty that carries profound existential implications, the appropriately named Will (Winston Duke) interviews souls who are vying to be selected for human life. The ramifications are monumental; not only does life involve vivid perceptions unavailable to these inchoate souls who occupy this liminal space, but if the candidate is not selected by Will, they wink out of existence entirely.
For his part, Will approaches this important work meticulously and humorlessly, his stoic demeanor belying the fact he harbors a deep wound. You see, he’s qualified to select the appropriate soul to be granted life because he was once selected himself, the circumstances of his own life resulting in a determination to pick someone who will not follow in his own mistakes. As a result, he spends the nine days of the film’s title running candidates through a battery of aptitude-type scenarios—including a hypothetical involving a life-and-death dilemma in a concentration camp.
Contrasting Will’s staid demeanor is his metaphysical colleague Kyo (Benedict Wong), a lighthearted man who enjoys watching key moments in the embodied souls’ lives. He and Will follow along with those who were selected for life by viewing POV feeds in the “TV room,” where stacks of boxy monitors broadcast lives being lived. Usually, Will and Kyo are viewing the big things, with Will documenting the particular day of a selection’s life in a notebook, but Kyo is also entertained by more mundane moments, such as the length of time one select has spent on the toilet due to a poor dietary choice.
Will records the more important bits on VHS tape and carefully organizes them for later reference, and there are paper files brimming from filing cabinets. When Will even goes the extra mile to simulate a single fleeting moment of life for those candidates he does not select, he does so with projectors, screens, stationary bikes and other 20th century items. The analog technology creates a satisfying juxtaposition with the supernatural magic at play here. As we currently exist in a world of deepfakes and sophisticated digital imagery, it’s comforting to see Will using these nostalgic devices, giving viewers of a certain age the validation that these outmoded technologies of our youth really are as integral and timeless as they once seemed.
Will tends to avoid the personal, keeping the interview questions posed to the soulful candidates intentional and direct. But his personality does begin to seep through in some of these interactions. He’s all business with nonchalant, sarcastic types like Alexander (Tony Hale), but he shows empathy and encouragement toward the meek and self-defeatist Mike (David Rysdahl), one of the first cuts who nevertheless gets to live out one shining, exhilarating moment (courtesy of Will and Kyo’s simulacra) with his toes planted in wet sand on the beach. Meanwhile, Will is equally kind to Maria (Arianna Ortiz), whose longshot effort to convince Will with a handwritten letter probably worked against her. Will seems to most identify with the cynicism of Kane (Bill Skarsgård), who views the living world as a perilous place with negativity and ugliness lurking around every corner. But it’s the eccentricities of the free-spirited Emma (Zazie Beetz) that really throws Will for a loop, especially in her penchant for turning Will’s questions back onto her interviewer.
Ultimately, Nine Days doesn’t celebrate the culmination of a life so much as revel in its ephemeral moments. Bliss is hard to come by, and impossible to maintain, but the collection of these moments supersedes the mundanity inherent to the majority of existence. Emma gets that and embodies it fully, and that leaves the film’s biggest tension not in who will be selected for life, but what will ultimately triumph within Will: cynicism or transcendence.
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