Late to the Game: 9
January 13, 2010 7:14 pm Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Animation, Fantasy, Science Fiction
2009 (USA)
Director: Shane Acker
Viewed: January 10, 2010
Format: DVD – Universal (2009)
Shane Acker’s talent for nimble, evocative world-building is on full display in 9. It’s telling that even at a lean 79 minutes, the film still feels a bit padded and sluggish on the story front, given that all the satisfying setting crunchiness is delivered swiftly and efficiently. Acker deftly establishes the essential traits of his post-apocalyptic world and the clan of burlap-skinned homunculi that inhabit it, while leaving plenty to implication and imagination, including the precise mechanics of the setting’s steampunk-tinged alchemical magic. Perhaps unexpectedly, the nine little doll-folk are quite distinctive, both visually and as characters, but the real draw here is not the simplistic story—a hero awakens evil and then defeats evil, etc., etc.—but the richness of the blasted landscape, the uncanny menace of the monsters that stalk it, and the thrills of numerous small-scale battles and escapes. Even the vague, unnecessarily drawn-out ending doesn’t markedly detract from 9’s guiltless visceral appeal, which is that of a novel, densely detailed world sketched with precision and enthusiasm. Acker gratifyingly demonstrates that not only aren’t the fantasy, science-fiction, and dystopian genres dead, they’re often found in the same film, and a gorgeously animated one at that.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
This time we agree. Did you watch the short? I would like to know if your opinion differed between the two. I feel like the story had so much potential.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:52 am
I haven’t seen the short, no. I think my main gripe about the film boils down to one of emphasis. I was much more interested in the story *behind* the setting–the backstory of the Machine and the scientist, how the scientist created the dolls, exactly how the setting’s magic-tech works–than in the more immediate story that was happening right in front of me. I didn’t care much whether the dolls defeated the Machine or whether their souls were liberated.
It’s the kind of world that would make a *great* open-ended, quasi-RPG adventure game.