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A knockout feature directorial debut from Edson Oda, Nine Days is an ethereal and evocative film about the meaning of life - elevated by a phenomenal performance from Winston Duke.

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‘Nine Days’ Review: Belief in the Beforelife

In this drama featuring Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz, unborn souls are given a chance at life on Earth.

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By Glenn Kenny

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov. We have been imagining and describing one of those ostensible eternities — the afterlife — for millenniums. “Nine Days,” the ambitious and often impressive debut feature from the writer-director Edson Oda, surprises by positing a prelife world, and a vetting process determining which souls are awarded a term on earth.

In a small house in the middle of a desert, a stocky, quiet man named Will (Winston Duke) watches a bank of tube TVs, recording their feeds on VHS cassettes. These POVs show the lives of the people he’s “passed.”

Just as he’s meeting, one by one, a new group of individuals to assess, one of his people in the world ends their life, which shakes Will to the core. He gets obsessed over why. Will this affect his ability to look at his new charges with fairness?

“Nine Days” is more about questions than answers. It’s not an overtly political film, in any sense. Will’s screens don’t seem to depict any human beings who aren’t at least in the vicinity of the middle class. When Will is pitching his candidates on his process, he tells them of “the amazing opportunity of life,” and that if they pass they will be “born in a fruitful environment.” But later Will blurts out some thoughts to his friend and neighbor Kyo (Benedict Wong) suggesting Will believes himself something of a con man.

The candidates are, arguably, stock characters with some sensitively added value. Alexander (Tony Hale) just wants to have beers and hang out. When he learns that Will himself once lived on earth — the film’s realm encompasses souls both “passed” and those never born — he can’t figure out why Will is reluctant. We know that Emma (Zazie Beetz) is going to be a special kind of free spirit by the insouciance she displays when showing up late for her first appointment.

Oda is a very assured and sometimes inspired filmmaker, and he handles his actors beautifully. Duke and Beetz in particular deliver performances for the ages. And the movie’s inquiries, about ethics, morality, consciousness and the ability to hang on in this brief crack of light we’re sharing at the moment, are pertinent. But the narrative conceits of “Nine Days,” while exquisitely constructed, are intricate to the point of laborious. At times the movie almost sinks under their weight.

Nine Days Rated R for language and themes. Running time 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters.

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A reclusive man conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born. A reclusive man conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born. A reclusive man conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born.

• Winston Duke
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• Trivia Director Edson Oda sites that the films that influenced this project include After Life (1998) by Hirokazu Koreeda and The Tree of Life (2011) by Terrence Malick.
• Goofs Will prefaces his "sadistic guard/pull the chair" scenario by saying that there is no right or wrong answer, just say what comes to mind. However, he disputes Kane's answer to the question.

Will : Have you ever reckoned the Earth much? Spend this day and night with me And you shall possess the origin of all poems I, I celebrate myself and sing myself And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you I loafe and invite my soul I lean and I loafe at my ease Observing a spear of summer grass Ah, my tongue, owww Every atom of my blood born here From parents born here And their parents the same As their parents the same I, now 37 years old and in perfect health, Begin hoping to cease not till death The smoke of my breath echoes, ripples Buzzed whispers, love root, silk thread, crotch and vine My inspiration and respiration The passing of air and blood through my lungs The sound of the belched words of my voice Loos'd to the eddies of the wind A few light kisses, a few embraces The reaching around of arms, the play of the light And shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag The delight alone or the rush of the streets Or along the fields and hillsides The feeling of health The full noon trill The song of me Rising from bed and greeting the sun. Hey, sun - sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun The last scud of sun holds back for me It flings my likeness after the rest And as true as any on the shadowed wilds It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk I depart as air I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags And to die is different than anyone supposed And luckier I bequeath myself to the dirt To grow from the grass I love If you want me again Look for me under your boot soles You will hardly know who I am or what I mean But I shall be good health to you nevertheless Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged Missing me one place, search another I stop someplace Waiting for you.

• Connections Referenced in Amanda the Jedi Show: Movies that Destroyed and Restored my Faith in Humanity | Sundance 2022 (2022)

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• July 30, 2021 (United States)
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Review: All things start with a screen test in the affirming metaphysical drama ‘Nine Days’

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In the rousing metaphysical drama “Nine Days,” applying for the chance to be alive requires a grueling interview process where unborn candidates are asked to analyze scenes of human jubilation and misfortune. The remarkably imagined and deftly implemented concept makes it difficult to compute this is Brazilian writer-director Edson Oda’s debut feature.

The tapestry of existence appears inside a lived-in home on a wall of archaic television sets, upon which we see the lives of others. Recognizably homey, the nostalgic aesthetic of this interstitial space preceding our mortal days adds grounded tactility to the perceptive, nearly airtight world-building. Stirring sequences when those disqualified receive a makeshift taste of the human experience exhibit similar handcrafted magic. Oda’s rendition of this limbo is a closer relative of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “After Life” than the ethereal neon take recently seen in Pixar’s “Soul.”

Conducting the assessment is Will ( Winston Duke ), a prim and proper bureaucrat of souls who once walked among the living. Fear colors his decision-making, prompting him to side with the less sensitive, especially after Amanda, one of those he sent to Earth, suffers a tragic fate. However, Emma (a radiant Zazie Beetz), an inquisitive applicant, encourages him to reconsider his inflexible beliefs. Their exchanges electrify with muted intensity.

Duke bleeds a performance veering between containment and theatricality, inching closer to a catharsis of hope with each passing day before he must choose a victor. Bittersweet turns from the ensemble, chiefly Tony Hale, Arianna Ortiz and Benedict Wong (playing Will’s wise sidekick), suffuse nearly every scene with potent longing (or what Portuguese speakers would describe as saudade ) — despite some touches of acting excess. Elevating the cleverly lo-fi and analog visuals, Oda includes subtle nods to his homeland, most notably in the music. The astonishing string-forward score by Antonio Pinto (composer for Brazilian modern classics “City of God” and “Central Station”) hypnotizes us into a state of melancholic weightlessness.

A life-affirming epiphany, “Nine Days” is cinema of a higher calling, spiritual without denomination. Oda’s great alchemy consists of turning ideas that in someone else’s hands would yield platitudes into observed lyricism that factors in the negative counterpoints. His optimism chooses to root for kindness knowing evil exists. Transient as our time here may be, from the moment the color bars of our genesis ignite on the screen of destiny to when the light of our flawed broadcast goes out, our every breath, in pain and in pleasure, is a miraculous privilege.

‘Nine Days’

Rated: R, for language Running time: 2 hour, 4 minutes Playing: Starts July 30 in select theaters

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Nine Days review: Existential drama about unborn souls competing for life lacks spark

Topic: Arts, Culture and Entertainment

First-time feature filmmaker Edson Oda workshopped the script for Nine Days at the 2017 Sundance Screenwriting Lab. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

If the soul exists, does it enter the world fully formed, cranked out by some celestial factory with a quota to meet? It's a question that's long proved irresistible for Hollywood, in everything from Shirley Temple's Technicolor tour of a cherubic pre-existence to last year's jazz-inflected Soul, an inventive Pixar comedy that depicted life's preamble as a surreal landscape of New Age blips and blunders.

Nine Days, the feature filmmaking debut for São Paulo-born, LA-based director Edson Oda, is the latest to ponder this metaphysical terrain: it's the story of a pre-mortal bureaucrat, Will (Winston Duke, Us), whose job is to interview potential candidates for life – unborn souls awaiting the chance to shuffle onto this mortal coil.

"You are being considered for the amazing opportunity of life," he tells a prospective applicant, with all the enthusiasm of a salesman pushing washer-dryers at a discount department store.

Outfitted in a button-up shirt, wire-rimmed glasses and suspenders, Will is a man out of both time and space, more mid-century bookkeeper than cosmic arbiter of souls.

"I walk around with a lot of social responsibility to people who look like me," Duke told Variety. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

Inside his modest weatherboard house on the interdimensional plain, he's glued to a bank of old television sets like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, watching, and recording – on VHS tapes, no less – the lives of those he's ushered into existence. (Turns out pre-life is pretty low-tech, or an art director's nostalgic vision of the recent past.)

Through a series of Blade Runner-like interviews designed to assess the candidates' humanity, Will whittles his current crop down to five pending souls, who then have nine days to prove they've got what it takes to survive life.

It's effectively an existential reality TV knockout round that will leave one lucky – or should that be unlucky? – contestant with a lifetime on Earth.

There's the shy one (David Rysdahl), the curious one (Arianna Ortiz), the 'funny' one (Arrested Development's Tony Hale) and the headstrong problem solver (Bill Skarsgård, eerily fresh-faced sans Pennywise makeup), with a free-thinking wildcard – Zazie Beetz's Emma – serving as the dramatic catalyst for our dour, emotionally repressed hero.

"I have an interest in humanistic subjects — what it's worth to be good or bad, how to survive in the world, and how the community influences the individual and vice versa," Oda says in the press notes. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

In a distinct echo of Kore-eda's After Life (1998) – let's politely call it an homage – unsuccessful applicants leave with a consolation prize: a single memory they can experience for a moment, presumably before being vanished into spiritual oblivion.

It's one of those ambitious concepts that's freighted with possibility, and Oda, who also wrote the screenplay, does a decent job of maintaining the intrigue for a stretch – there's an appealing dissonance between the sci-fi set-up and the film's homespun, almost dreary aesthetic, and in the dialogue that distills metaphysical head-scratchers to mundane conversations.

The film was shot over 24 days on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

Oda is a successful commercial director whose work combines pop culture nostalgia and DIY technique, one of a slew of ad-world filmmakers whose work feels inspired by Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry – those erstwhile music video tricksters who clowned on high-concept premises with irreverent, inventive formalism in films like Being John Malkovich and The Science of Sleep.

Jonze is an executive producer on Nine Days, and his spirit hovers at its fringes, but Oda's more earnest approach, while sometimes visually creative, is far removed from the funny, impish execution of the Adaptation director.

Once Nine Days reveals its narrative hand, it quickly goes to pieces – collapsing into largely predictable drama at the expense of its concept.

The story was inspired by an event in Oda's family: his uncle died by suicide when writer/director was 12 years old. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

We discover that Will, who was alive before his current post, is haunted by a deep sense of regret for the life he lived, a feeling compounded as he watches one of his previous, successful candidates – now a classical concert violinist – run aground in the existential abyss.

While there's something fascinating about Will's lonely voyeurism, the doomed limbo of an eternity spent watching other peoples' lives on screen, Oda's screenplay instead goads the film toward rote dramatic revelations about living your best life, all spliced with the kind of images – the simple pleasure of a bike ride, waves lapping a beach shoreline – that come off as cheesy where they're supposed to be poignant.

I kept waiting for American Beauty's plastic bag to drift into frame, captured on the kind of 'vintage' camcorder the film might fetishise.

Even in the unreal logic of the world that the film establishes, unanswered questions hang. Why do all these pre-souls behave in distinctly Earthly ways? How is Will's neighbour, Kyo (Benedict Wong), a voice of everyday humanity, when he's never been alive? And when did the capacity for moral reasoning become grounds to put someone in the world?

"I know you're talking about it's a 'sci-fi' [film,] but I think it's like a 'spi-fi' — spiritual fiction," Wong told Variety. ( Supplied: Sony Pictures Classics/Michael Coles )

It's all a bit reductive, sidelining the wonderful chaos of the universe for a schematic, depressingly human perspective.

"What's it like, to be alive?" asks Emma in one scene, a question that might have been affecting if the line didn't land with the thud of a local drama workshop, grasping at unearned profundity.

Beetz, who is very good as usual, makes the most of a role that isn't much more than a screenwriting lab shortcut, while Duke, an imposing actor who fills the frame with melancholy, gives a performance of quietly calibrated restraint, preserving his character's enigma long after the film has all but abandoned him.

No performer could rescue the heavily telegraphed, gear-crunching climax that lies in wait for these characters, however; an overripe lunge for catharsis that's so "Oscar clip" silly it was all I could do to keep from cackling.

Your mileage, as they used to say, may vary. Warmer hearts might prove more receptive.

Nine Days is in cinemas nationally from July 15; the Sydney release date is TBC due to lockdown.

Existential Fantasy Film Nine Days Is Thought-Provoking and Life-Affirming

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WARNING: This article on   Nine Days contains discussion of suicide.

In the opening scenes of Nine Days , a man (played by Winston Duke ) living in a house in the middle of nowhere monitors a wall of TVs broadcasting first-person perspectives from what we can assume are other people. The man records these first-person feeds on VHS tapes and keeps extensive notes and files on these people. He mostly works alone, though one other man (Benedict Wong) occasionally pops in. Then, disaster strikes on one of the TVs: a violinist dies in a car crash, seemingly not by accident, and the TV goes blank.

It's with all this mysterious set-up that we finally get to the main premise of the movie. Figuring this out just from watching is compelling in its own right, so for those compelled to watch this movie going in completely blind, stop reading here, but the trailer already tells you the premise, and it's impossible to discuss the movie without dealing with it, so let's proceed with this not-really-a-spoiler. Duke's character is a soul who was once alive but is no longer, and his job is to test a batch of newly created souls to determine which of them will fill the dead violinist's absence and get a chance at life. (Sudden realization when writing it out: yes, this is basically a more logical version of making the Jellicle Choice in Cats .) Wong's character helps out but can't select souls himself because he was never alive.

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These new souls have instinctual knowledge, but not experience. The tests, which last nine days at maximum, involve a combination of tough questions, journaling and watching the video feeds from Earth. When a candidate fails the test, they are given the chance to experience one part of life they find truly moving in the form of intricately designed, surreally beautiful augmented reality experiences. One of the candidates, played by Zazie Beetz, grows particularly curious about her tester's experiences as a human, but this is a sore subject for him, and getting any answers is a challenge.

Nine Days is Edson Oda's first feature film, developed through the 2017 Sundance Screenwriter's Lab before premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and signals an outstanding directing talent to look out for. Its theological fiction plays kind of like a much more serious version of The Good Place , though it still has a sense of humor (Wong has particularly strong comedic delivery, as does Tony Hale as a soul seemingly pre-destined to fill a selfish sitcom dad stereotype). It's vision of an abstract existence before birth is strikingly original; it will be interesting to compare how Pixar's Soul deals with this type of setting in a presumably very different fashion. Its puzzles and big ideas are stimulating to the mind, and the cinematography and score please the eyes and ears.

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Most significantly, it moves the heart, particularly through Winston Duke's heavily layered performance. What Oda's done with Nine Days is something truly valuable: he's crafted a film that's completely empathetic to those struggling with suicidal depression that is also able to communicate the inherent value of living in a way that's not the least bit cornball or dismissive of life's worst hardships. The cogs in its cosmos are imperfect, and that's OK. This movie could genuinely save lives.

Nine Days stars Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgård and David Rysdahl. It will open the Austin Film Festival on October 22 and is scheduled to be released in theaters January 22, 2021.

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Review: nine days is a frustratingly inert fantasy about our place in the world.

Writer-director Edson Oda never really puts a unique spin on the familiar story of otherworldly figures peering in on the lives of the living.

The shadows of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s After Life and Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life loom large over Edson Oda’s feature-length directorial debut, Nine Days , whose story also unfolds in a mysterious limbo realm. It’s there that Will (Winston Duke) spends eternity watching the lives of people on Earth via stacks of TV monitors, while also auditioning a group of unborn souls to replace a perished individual on Earth, and in turn experience the miracle of life. But unlike Kore-eda and Brooks, Oda never really puts a unique spin on the familiar story of otherworldly figures peering in on the lives of the living.

Nine Days ’s most notable idea is its understanding of life as a kind of performance, with people on Earth seen as the protagonists of movies being watched and scrutinized by Will. But it’s also one that’s essentially a riff on Defending Your Life ’s central conceit, and it may leave viewers plagued with an almost constant déjà vu all the way through to the moment that it explicitly states the point that’s implicitly conveyed by Will’s candidates during the audition process: that life, in all its joys and hardships, shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Duke, who makes a more lasting impression than the film’s ideas, plays Will with a coiled restraint and a professional coolness toward the candidates whom he interviews no matter how hard they try to engage him on a personal level. But Will shows subtle yet increasing flashes of emotion as his aloof demeanor starts to crack, due to both his trying investigation into the death of one of his charges on Earth and the constant prying by one candidate, Emma (Zazie Beetz), into his mysterious past. This culminates in Will’s climactic reading of a Walt Whitman passage to Emma that he had committed to memory: Rendered by Duke with amusingly apt theatricality, Will explosively gives himself over to the joy-inducing pleasures that he had talked to the candidates about but was heretofore reluctant to embrace.

To an extent, it makes sense that the clinical tone of Nine Days mirrors its main character’s personality. But given how Nine Days endlessly discusses the wonders of being alive, you may find yourself wishing that this by and large inert film featured more sparks of life like the raucous Whitman reading. Oda refreshingly depicts the candidates experiencing the sort of minor spectacles of life that they—to a stultifying extent—watch on TV and analyze, and there are jolts of energy courtesy of snappily edited montages occurring at sporadic intervals, which efficiently contrast, via inspired match cuts, the candidates’ different personalities, and how they fare during the audition process. But such moments are few and far between.

To his credit, Oda thankfully never feels the need to bog down the story by explaining every aspect of its limbo realm, and the film boasts one truly unforgettable scene. In it, Will grants a final wish to a rejected candidate, Mike (David Rysdahl), to enjoy a simple walk on the beach. Will constructs a fake yet detailed shoreline for Mike, and as Will simulates a gentle tide by pushing an oar through the water, Nine Days movingly captures the beauty of the ostensibly quotidian through Mike’s experience and the candidate’s subsequent state of bliss. In fact, if it weren’t for the loving attention to detail present in this sequence, you’d think that Oda, like his characters, got his ideas about life predominantly by watching it on a screen.

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Wes Greene is a film writer based out of Philadelphia.

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‘Nine Days’: Life After Death (and Before Life)

By David Fear

We are born, we live, and we die. Before we can get on that particular merry-go-round, however, we must first be interviewed. The interrogator is tall, quiet, fastidious, well-dressed. Small granny spectacles perch on his nose as he asks questions of those who sit before him. And when he’s not doing that, he’s reviewing former “vacancies” that he’s filled, watching on a bank of monitors displaying numerous lives in progress. If we are lucky, we are chosen to go forth, from cradle to grave. If not, perhaps the man will do what he can to give us one fleeting moment of happiness before we disappear into the ether.

This is the premise of Nine Days, Edson Oda’s odd, affecting portrait of a prelife purgatory A cross between a Gondry-esque chin-stroker and a Zen Buddhist tweak on The Good Place, Nine Days — so named for the length it takes to choose a candidate for birth — has its share of near-twee tics. Will, the stoic gent who’s one of this limbo’s selectors, dresses like an uptight Amish metaphysics professor. (He’s played by Us / Black Panther star Winston Duke , who proves he’s as adept at art-house minimalism as he is at horror/Marvel movie maximalism.) His headquarters is a throwback Craftsman house in the middle of a literal nowhere, and he watches his former picks go about their lives via vintage home-entertainment equipment and videotapes. Before a life begins, it’s represented by color bars and a test-pattern whistle. Last-wish requests turn into arts-and-crafts projects involving fake beach scenes, movie screens, stationary cycles, jaunty music, teary cheeks.

Yet what might seem, at first sneer, like just a hipster’s notion of eternity as an artisanal, analog-tech ghost town eventually reveals a deeper purpose, and a determination to move past any too-cool-for-film-school superficiality. A Japanese Brazilian filmmaker with a background in commercials, Oda is taking big philosophical swings with his debut: What are the nature of souls? Is a life something to be earned, rather than gifted? Does the beauty of being human outweigh the pain of existence, or do these two elements symbiotically feed off each other, yin to yang? Who are we, before we are anything at all?

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Having been shaken by seeing a former case study die in a car crash, Will has begun questioning the nature of his endeavor as he and his assistant (Benedict Wong) run through a new batch of candidates, some of whom are played by Tony Hale (funny), Bill Skarsgård (freaky), and Zazie Beetz (fabulous). The latter, in particular, keeps lobbing queries back at the interviewer, forcing him to engage in a way he’d usually rather not. Not to mention the fact that Will is one of the few in this vaguely pastoral purgatory to have actually been on Earth, an experience that still weighs on him.

It’s heavy, heady stuff, coming at you via a delivery system of catalog-worthy set design, magic-hour cinematography, and often tamped-down, deadpan performances. And somehow, it all works in harmony to create a ripple effect of feeling that reverberates strongly under its placid surfaces. (The closest thing this resembles isn’t something like, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so much as Columbus, that quiet, contemplative indie sleeper starring John Cho from 2017 that also trafficked in form-and-content exteriors and interior musings.) Oda was quoted as saying that during production, Wong dubbed the film “spi-fi,” short for “spiritual fiction” — an apt catch-all term that applies to a growing subgenre that speculates on life after death, life before life, literal long, dark/light nights of the soul, et al. So many of these stories tend to leave little more than a whimsical, chalky quirk-cinema aftertaste. Nine Days doesn’t just tempt fate on that count; it also asks that its lead actor send the movie off with an almost childlike dramatic interpretation of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The degree of difficulty is high. The payoff, somehow, is extraordinary.

This review originally ran as part of our 2020 Sundance Film Festival coverage.

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Nine Days review – a brilliantly crafted philosophical deep dive

Souls vie for the chance at being born in debut filmmaker Edson Oda's small miracle of a film, starring Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz

16 Dec 2021

When a person dies, the decay of their body generates infinitesimal particles of carbon dioxide. The disintegration of their bones produces calcium and phosphorus. The end of their life signals the beginning of a new one in a myriad of forms, plants that feed on fertile soil and microorganisms that consume and repurpose in a beautifully orchestrated cycle.

Edson Oda’s debut feature Nine Days explores this idea of life as a precisely calculated equation, albeit in a less scientific, more philosophical manner. Reclusive Will (Winston Duke) splits his days between watching the lives of a select group of people in an imposing wall of television screens and conducting interviews with a series of candidates for a most unusual vacancy: a chance at being born.

“You are being considered for the amazing opportunity of life,” the man tells the souls who enter his common-looking office before providing each one with a unique name – their first contact with a semblance of individuality. The process that follows spans over nine days and consists of a series of moral dilemmas mixed with quiet observation, Will’s sombre demeanour always hovering over the anxiety-ridden applicants.

The minute details behind the specifics of Will’s position remain a mystery, but contestants are made aware of the fact that he was once alive, the main qualifier for becoming the gatekeeper of this puzzling limbo in the form of a rusty cabin in the middle of the desert. As the group faces the wonders and brutalities of being alive, Will is made to rummage once more through the grief and regrets of the life he left behind, confronted time and time again with the cruelty of the old bumper stick cliché: you only live once.

And it is precisely in the simmering pain of rummaging that Duke excels, his performance a visceral display of how small droplets can slowly and gradually bring down the sturdiest of walls. From the controlled undertones of his voice to the way in which his hands uncomfortably grasp for the fragile glasses rigidly sitting at the top of his nose, the actor is in full command of what, at times, feels like an avalanche trapped in Tupperware.

Counterbalancing Duke’s reticent intensity are Benedict Wong as Will’s right-hand man Kyo and Zazie Beetz as rule-breaking candidate Emma. Together, the two Pollyannas play a charming version of The Glad Game, actively choosing to look at life with kind, optimistic eyes, huffing and puffing in camaraderie as they try and try to pull a grunting Will to their side. And yet the man remains unmovable, his eyes drained of joy as he ends all pleas with the words “you have never been alive.”

A small miracle of a film, Nine Days pokes and prods at the darkest corners of the existential without ever surrendering to the heavy fetters of nihilism, an accomplishment for any experienced director that, in the hands of newcomer Edson Oda, feels nothing short of pure magic.

Nine Days is in select UK cinemas from 17 December.

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Directors: Edson Oda Writers: Edson Oda Stars: Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgård

Synopsis: A man interviews five unborn souls to determine which one can be given life on Earth.

Nine Days look through its own highly contemplative lens of love, fear, hate, anger, pride, disgust, and joy to view each other’s autonomy. Edison Oda’s long-awaited debut feature is a pensive meditation on the act of playing God and the randomness of choosing what (in this case, a soul) that makes a life worth living.

The concept of pre-existence is the focus of Oda’s film, even if some confuse the setup with reincarnation. That’s what Will (Us’s Winton Duke, just remarkable here) attempts to navigate arduously. He is The Interviewer- being that auditions unborn souls for a chance to be born into the world. It’s a stressful position to be in. Knowing your work is purely judged upon a soul’s choices that lead to success and failures. As the souls begin to emanate across the desert landscape, all end up on Will’s country home’s doorstep.

To witness this is Kyo (Benedict Wong). A loyal soul that arrived ages ago but never left. He has never been human and is obsessed with watching Will’s top choices for life on earth. All are displayed on stacked old television sets so he can observe their decisions and their effects. That’s when Will’s favorite, a young violinist named Amanda, dies after driving her car into the wall of a cement underpass. That’s when they all start showing up at his door because a slot has just opened up. All while grappling with why Amanda was so careless with the precious gift she was given.

Nine Days is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking. Oda also wrote the script that needed a steady, patient hand that could have crumbled apart because of its fragile nature. The script is steeped in themes of creationism in its most basic form. Earth was created from free will (that’s foreshadowing), and God has the right to tinker with that process.

As Will begins, with what seems to be an arbitrary interview process, he gives them strict guidelines. He analysis each soul’s essence. Emma (Zazie Beetz) is empathetic and guarded, while Alexander (Tony Hale) is the yes-man and won’t take anything seriously. Kane (Bill Skarsgård) is a stoic realist who carefully considers his options before deciding. It’s all about the mental makeup that navigates life’s pitfalls, while Will forgets what qualities make life worth living. What he is doing is now questioning his belief in free will and the responsibility that comes with that.

Winston Duke is a powerhouse as Will in Nine Days. At points, he quietly contemplates each move, note, glance, and huff of air with tenderness and understanding. At others, his anger is as much as a light switch as he struggles with the decision that has no easy answers or guarantees. It’s a phenomenal performance that shows he has no ceiling. Along with Wong’s scene-stealing supporting turn, Beetz’s soulful presence, and Hale’s limited but moving portrayal, it may be the best casting of any film this year. Along with Antonio Pinto’s evocative musical score and beautiful cinematography by Wyatt Garfield, everything works so harmoniously.

Nine Days isn’t a film that works on many levels, but the one it plays on has higher aspirations are powerful and profound. Even if the ending scene is a bit too much epic poetry for my tastes for a film that is already so visually lyrical, however, Ado does make an apt point. One’s aspirations for experiencing moments of pure joy are universal. Will can’t help if he’s that picky. By all means, it’s hard to find that one leaf among all those blades of grass.

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‘Nine Days’ Review: Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz Salvage a Literal-Minded Soul-Searching Drama

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“ Nine Days ” takes a ludicrous premise and plays it straight. Writer-director Edson Oda’s innovative drama revolves around the tireless plight of Will ( Winston Duke ), a jaded middle-manager trapped in a purgatorial cycle of interviewing souls for the opportunity of life. Oda’s script is rich with bold ideas, beginning with the surreal notion of entire lives unfolding through VHS tapes and climaxes with a hyperbolic recitation of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” It’s an enchanting fantasy bookended with genuine emotional beats. Somewhere in between them, however, it settles into a dreary slog bogged down by repetitive existential blather over the course of two hours, as if enmeshed in a soul-searching journey of its own.

Oda’s ambitious feature debut works overtime to maintain its visionary conceit. The opening act has a striking immersive quality as the purgatorial setting gradually comes together. Spending tireless hours in a dimly-lit house surrounded by emptiness in every direction, Will watches the lives of the souls he selected unfold in grainy first-person footage while scribbling notes about each one, tracking the days and making note of every high point and hardship. His assistant (Benedict Wong) brings some levity into Will’s peculiar routine, but Will — who, unlike his peer, once lived a life of his own and doesn’t like to talk about it — has grown so absorbed with his viewing habits he’s like the binge-viewing version of a guardian angel.

The opening moments of “Nine Days” maintain a haunting, immersive energy, with Will’s multi-channel setup resembling a Nam June Paik installation from the great beyond, and Duke’s somber investment in his task carrying a profound sense of mystery. That’s when tragedy strikes, as Will watches one of his favorite selections, a violinist named Amanda, suddenly bring her life to an abrupt end. But Will has little time to investigate the tragedy before he’s forced to get to work, as new souls converge on his desert compound for the bureaucratic process of interviewing for the vacant spot in his roster.

The ensuing process unfolds like a cerebral variation on the quirky heavenly sagas that preceded it. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “After Life” provides the most obvious point of comparison, though Will’s shadowy lair has glimmers of Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” and there’s an aspect of “This Is Your Life” to the reality-show competition as Will explains it to the various candidates who come across his desk. The souls arrive freshly cognizant and filled with personality, as Will explains to them the rules: They get nine days to audition for life while completing a range of tasks he sets before them; the winner won’t remember any of it, but “you will still be you.”

Let the metaphors settle in, or just roll with the literal-mindedness of the plot, because once the ensemble is complete, Oda provides a colorful set of personalities. These include a sensitive-eyed Arianna Ortiz, a laidback Bill Skarsgard, and ever-amusing Tony Hale as a jokester whose disinterest in taking Will’s process seriously sets up his main foil. But none of the candidates create more complications for the overseer than the one Will dubs Emma (Zazie Beetz), a free spirit who resists the mind games Will enacts on each of them. Instead, she takes a greater interest in Will himself — where he came from and why he’s so reticent to reveal the challenges he faced in life. For much of the movie, she roams the interiors of the home, watching his unusual job take place and questioning his icy commitment.

While “Nine Days” unfurls with tremendous imagination in its opening stretch, it loses much of that entrancing appeal by eschewing surrealism for dramaturgy, lengthy epistemological arguments and hyperbolic emotional outbursts that might have registered better on the stage. (In the fact, the movie’s minimalist set would lend itself well to a theatrical setup.) Will’s chemistry with Wong’s ebullient character is appealing in fits and starts, while Beetz brings a credible degree of skepticism to her individualist mindset, but Oda’s script struggles to make this dynamic as compelling as the ethereal world he establishes upfront.

Nevertheless, the movie provides a remarkable showcase for Duke’s range, a world apart from the dopey dad of “Us” or stern warrior of “Black Panther,” and his talent only becomes more central as the character opens himself up. Oda clearly has a talent for juggling nuanced performances with a cinematic eye, working with versatile cinematographer Wyatt Garfield (whose recent credits range from “Diane” to “Give Me Liberty”) to create an absorbing environment at every stage — the hazy desert surroundings and shadowy interior are dreamlike and grounded at once. Oda’s evident affection for Michel Gondry comes through in the use of practical sets to enhance the otherworldly backdrop, particularly in a series of entrancing scenes where Will stages touching moments for rejected souls to give them some measure of happiness before they’re blinked out of existence.

“Nine Days” has enough depth and intrigue to suggest the material for a short that never quite found its way, though some viewers may find its open-ended spiritual implications compelling enough to roll with its overwrought second half. For this one, however, the movie overextends itself by shrugging off the eerie world-building to let the metaphors take charge; by the end, the premise has devolved into an actor’s showcase with a flimsy foundation. There’s certainly enough here to provoke meaningful questions that transcend the boundaries of the frame, and “Nine Days” hits a commendable note about the value of embracing life’s unpredictable turns. But no matter its celestial implications, the movie can’t shake the impression of a brilliant concept that never takes flight.

“Nine Days” premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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Nine Days REVIEW – A Smashing Directorial Debut

Edson Oda is going on to big things.

Directed and written by Edson Oda, Nine Days follows Will (Winston Duke), an arbiter living in limbo who interviews and tests nine souls over the course of nine days as each of them applies for the position of ‘Being Alive.’ Though he has done this many times before, there’s a particular applicant who stands out from the crowd, Emma (Zazie Beetz), who causes Will to reflect upon his long-forgotten humanity.

While we may still be in the grip of a worldwide pandemic which puts restrictions on returning to normalcy, some of the films that have come out in 2021 have provided an entertaining distraction from the bitter reality of the outside world. Films like Women Is Losers , a stunning tale of the struggles of American women in the 1960s, and the Demon Slayer movie , which stands as a testament to how much the anime industry has developed in modern times. That trend continues with Nine Days. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival 2020, and further delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a wonderful movie that doesn’t need much to capture the audience’s attention.

When it comes to debuts, the future of the director’s career hangs in the balance, and this is especially true for first time directors/writers. However, Edson Oda must’ve taken a leaf from the Ridley Scott school of directing, because while the transition from commercials to motion picture directing may be a daunting prospect, Oda makes the change beautifully. His combination of a strong script and beautifully edited camera work make Nine Days a gorgeous project, despite only having a limited budget of $10 million .

Granted, a script and cameras can only take a film so far, but the exceptional cast is another factor that plays into the project’s strengths. The roles are somewhat limited, but with the addition of Duke and Beetz, there’s also tried and tested names who have proven their strong acting before: Benedict Wong alongside Will as a fellow arbiter called Kyo, while Bill Skarsgård and Tony Hale are some of the more prominent applying souls. Though Duke, Beetz and Wong are undoubtedly the best actors in this movie, each and every one of the cast make the film consistently enjoyable over the two-hour running time.

With only a couple of sets to work with – the most used one being a bungalow in the middle of the desert – the limited production value of the film does rear its head at points, but adds to the film’s charm instead of taking away anything from the viewer’s enjoyment. There are a few select moments where Will and Kyo recreate moments in life for the applying souls with screens and whatever else they can get their hands on, and it’s through this use of limited materials that the film creates some of its more serene moments. As for the score, instead of swelling orchestral pieces, which the movie only saves for some of the grander moments in the film, there are also stringed instruments which regularly play pizzicato in the background, helping Nine Days stand out compared to other film soundtracks.

Nine Days is simply delightful to watch. It touches every emotional beat, from heartbreaking – like when each of the unsuccessful applicants find out they weren’t a correct fit for the position – to beautiful – Will’s rendition of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself was especially stunning to me – and even a bit of comedy. Sometimes having a movie this long can cause the audience to get bored or the pacing to drag a bit, but Nine Days takes advantage of every minute to the best of its ability.

Nine Days is one of those films that transcends being a simple motion picture and blossoms into something more. It is a question which asks the audience what it means to be alive, and also tells them that while there’s darkness and sadness in the world, there are moments of happiness and beauty from simple things like enjoying a friend’s laughter. This film stands as one of 2021’s must watch independent films. As for Edson Oda, I eagerly await to see what the future holds for him and his career as a movie director.

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Common Sense Media Review

Touching meaning-of-life fantasy drama has strong language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Nine Days is a beautiful, mysterious fantasy/drama about a metaphysical way station where a man named Will (Winston Duke, of Black Panther ) chooses a soul to be given life. Language is the biggest issue, with uses of "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "damn," "pissed," and "d--k." There…

Why Age 14+?

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "s--thole," "pain in the ass," "damn," "pissed," "d--k."

Person killed in car crash. Suicide note. Brief images of shooting, with bloody

Kiss at wedding. Dialogue: "call some chicks."

Drinks with dinner. Characters share beers. Dialogue about "grabbing a beer." Me

Any Positive Content?

Although the movie doesn't really come right out and say it, the overall message

Main character Will (Winston Duke) is a Black man. Other key cast members includ

Only Will might qualify as a role model, and only because he's so kind that he a

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Person killed in car crash. Suicide note. Brief images of shooting, with bloody wounds. Images of guns and target shooting. A child who's bullied fights back with a rock. Dialogue about a man raping and murdering girls. Upsetting dialogue involving a child in a threatening situation. Gross dialogue about man puking/swallowing and about feces blocking up a toilet.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinks with dinner. Characters share beers. Dialogue about "grabbing a beer." Mention of "drunk driving."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Although the movie doesn't really come right out and say it, the overall message is mainly about appreciating the gift that is life, including every little moment and every thing of beauty. Also, it's important to work on overcoming needless feelings of guilt.

Diverse Representations

Main character Will (Winston Duke) is a Black man. Other key cast members include Zazie Beetz (who has German and South African roots), Benedict Wong (born in England to Hong Kong immigrant parents), and Arianna Ortiz (whose ethnicity is a mix of Indigenous Peruvian, Spanish, Black, and White). Other characters of color are seen in smaller or background roles.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Role Models

Only Will might qualify as a role model, and only because he's so kind that he actually takes time out to create memories for his "unchosen" souls, which involves building sets and props. (One soul gets a "day on the beach," and another enjoys a bike ride through the "countryside.") Apparently, making these memories isn't part of the rules of this world; Will does them out of the goodness of his heart.

Parents need to know that Nine Days is a beautiful, mysterious fantasy/drama about a metaphysical way station where a man named Will (Winston Duke, of Black Panther ) chooses a soul to be given life. Language is the biggest issue, with uses of "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "damn," "pissed," and "d--k." There are also some violent images, including guns and shooting, brief bloody wounds, a child being bullied (and then retaliating by hitting back with a rock), a person being killed in a car crash, a suicide note, and various examples of upsetting, violent, or disgusting dialogue ("rape," "murder," "vomit," "poop," etc.). There's also some sex-related dialogue and a kiss at a wedding. Characters share beers, and there are casual drinks with dinner, in addition to dialogue about a drunk driver. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

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What's the Story?

In NINE DAYS, in a house seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Will (Winston Duke) watches a bank of TV sets, monitoring the progress of a woman named Amanda, as well as her tragedy. Soon Will has several visitors -- Mike (David Rysdahl), Alexander ( Tony Hale ), Kane ( Bill Skarsgård ), Maria (Arianna Ortiz), Anne (Perry Smith), and later Emma ( Zazie Beetz ) -- among them. Viewers learn that they're unborn souls, and that Will has been given the task of choosing which among them will get the chance to be born. Another unborn soul, Kyo ( Benedict Wong ), hangs around and helps Will out. As candidates are eliminated, Will does his best to create "memories" for them that they can hang onto. But as Will gets down to the final two candidates, it becomes clear that his obsession with Amanda is clouding his judgment. Can he make the correct choice?

Is It Any Good?

This beautiful, minimalist existential fantasy gets its power not only from its great cast, but also its refusal to answer questions or explain things. It's content to revel in mystery of being human. The feature debut of writer/director Edson Oda, Nine Days begins with its simple, powerful setting: a modest house that seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Characters occasionally walk away from the house, and the land looks like it stretches on forever. It feels like an isolated way station, maybe in the center of the universe. Will (what better name for someone in charge of choosing life?) never lets on why he asks the questions he asks and is forever reiterating that there are no "wrong" answers.

But rather than being frustrating, this is constantly intriguing. The other characters, like us, are forever trying to figure out the situation, and what exactly to say or do -- but there's no right answer. They're all likable, and they all seem like good candidates, so Will's choices, again, seem arbitrary. The only thing that's sure in Nine Days is that Will feels guilt over the fate of his pick Amanda, and that guilt pushes up against everything else in the movie. When he makes his eventual realization -- followed by an exuberant recitation of Walt Whitman -- it has a visceral impact. A weight has lifted, and life feels full of possibility. This is a beautiful movie that's shrouded in mystery but also in hope and appreciation for all we're given.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Nine Days ' violent content . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What's the major takeaway from this movie? How do you suppose you can appreciate your life in a more effective way?

Why does Will blame himself for Amanda's death? Have you ever blamed yourself for something that wasn't your fault?

Did you notice positive diverse representations in the movie? What about stereotypes?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 30, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : November 2, 2021
• Cast : Winston Duke , Zazie Beetz , Bill Skarsgård , Benedict Wong
• Director : Edson Oda
• Inclusion Information : Asian directors, Latino directors, Black actors, Female actors, Asian actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 124 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language
• Last updated : March 23, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

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Nine days - movie review.

With its mere concept, Edson Oda ’s feature film debut, Nine Days , certainly had the potential of falling victim to an avalanche of clichés that would only be further piled on with winces and eye rolls from the audience. However, the way Oda confidently composes and presents the film to us, he is careful not to portray the existential subject as corny or even pretentious. Rather, through a variety of characters, he highlights the ways in which ordinary people approach and appreciate the world around them and even themselves. 

In a remote house in the desert, Will ( Winston Duk e) spends his days monitoring a wall of televisions that display the lives of individuals through each of their own unique points of view from the comfort of his couch. But when his favorite person, a young violinist named Amanda, unexpectedly dies, there is now a vacancy, and Will must judge the next soul to fill the spot. Soon, a select number of unborn souls that carry their unique perspectives and personalities - Bill Skarsgård, Tony Hale, Arianna Ortiz, David Rysdahl , and Zazie Beetz – arrive at Will’s doorstep, and over the next nine days (if they make it that long) are subjected to his numerous tests in determining whether or not they may live. But through this process, Will is pushed to confront himself and his past when the free-spirited, slightly-dissident candidate, Emma ( Beetz ), forces him to do so.

The rupture of Will’s simplistic life and job comes from Emma, who seems to embody the heart of the film, when she shows Will that life is not always black-and-white. Simple answers cannot and should not always be given. She is not afraid of being open with her emotions and curiosities by questioning Will at almost every turn. But these attributes are things that not only frustrate Will, but he also fears for her if she enters the harsh, unforgiving world that he painfully experienced and is reminded of everyday. Despite this, Emma’s instincts point to her belief that simple things in life can be memorable, instead of just fleeting. And things that do indeed makes us feel alive should, over everything else, be cherished forever. 

Sure, the message of the film borders on cheesy, but who cares? It’s all about the delivery. Overall, it is a sweet and thoughtful film sprinkled with moments of wonderfully simple joys that will make the audience reflect upon their own lives as Will did with his own (though probably not in the same dramatic way). And, like I said, it could have been pretentious, but it is not. Trust me. Sometimes a film comes along that reminds us that we should appreciate living life a little bit more, and Nine Days does just that.

Nine Days is now playing in select theaters.

MPAA Rating: R for language. Runtime: 124 mins Director : Edson Oda Writer: Edson Oda Cast: Winston Duke; Zazie Beetz; Benedict Wong Genre : Drama | Fantasy Tagline: Life Begins at the End. Memorable Movie Quote: Distributor: Sony Classics Official Site: https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/ninedays Release Date: August 6, 2021 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: Synopsis : Will ( Winston Duke ) spends his days in a remote outpost watching the live Point of View (POV) on TV’s of people going about their lives, until one subject perishes, leaving a vacancy for a new life on earth. Soon, several candidates — unborn souls — arrive at Will's to under go tests determining their fitness, facing oblivion when they are deemed unsuitable. But Will soon faces his own existential challenge in the form of free-spirited Emma ( Zazie Beetz ), a candidate who is not like the others, forcing him to turn within and reckon with his own tumultuous past. Fueled by unexpected power, he discovers a bold new path forward in his own life.

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Screen Rant

Nine days review: a jarring, soulful meditation on the intensity of existence.

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Cinema helps audiences unravel the many layers of life and understand what existence essentially means, providing a glimpse into things often overlooked. Certain films, such as Kore-eda Hirokazu’s After Life and Pixar’s Soul , help transport the audience into realms beyond their comprehension, particularly those that delicately hinge between life and death. Edson Oda’s feature-length directorial debut, Nine Days , follows a similar premise, wherein souls after death compete for a fresh chance at life, whilst parsing the meaning of being alive. Thoughtful and hauntingly beautiful in style and treatment, Nine Days emerges as a sublime slice of cinema that sincerely tugs at the heartstrings.

Carrying out a quaint, solitary life at a beautiful home in the desert, Will (Winston Duke) watches over the lives of those he has selected over the years, noting every detail of their everyday existence. Being an interviewer and selector of lives best suited for rebirth, Will carries out his duty with utmost dedication, looking into the multifarious vignettes of the lives he chooses. However, after the sudden death of Will’s favorite soul Amanda (Lisa Starrett), he must conduct a nine-day interview process to select the best candidate in Amanda’s stead. The cheerful and warm Kyo (Benedict Wong) assists Will in the selection process, although it is hinted that the former had never experienced life before, imbuing the character with a sort of otherworldly wonder.

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While a touch of the supernatural looms over the entirety of Nine Days , this is not a film that is keen on peeling back the layers surrounding the mysteries of life after death or the elusive machinations of a limbo world. Instead, what Oda chooses to focus on is surprisingly human: what makes a soul eligible for a new life, and what indeed are the parameters of a life brimming with happiness and promise? Amanda’s death haunts Will’s every movement, as the 28-year-old violin virtuoso had never exhibited signs of depression or suicidal tendencies, but had ultimately made the decision to die by suicide via a deliberate car crash. This understandably shatters Will as this reopens his repressed wounds, his misgivings regarding his judgment, with the enormity of his decisions weighing heavily upon his psyche.

Should he choose the tender-hearted and artistic Mike (David Rysdahl), the empathetic-but-firm Maria (Arianna Ortiz), the laidback and easy-going Alexander (Tony Hale), or the nihilistic, yet emotionally balanced Kane (Bill Skarsgård)? Although Will manages to conduct the interview process with controlled aloofness throughout, the arrival of Emma (Zazie Beetz) cataclysms the cracks within Will’s soul, exposing a deeply emotional, vulnerable man within despite believing that she “does not fit” due to her unique perspectives on human existence and her purely optimistic, emotionally driven responses. Apart from being an odyssey on human vulnerability, Nine Days celebrates the little moments that are most often taken for granted.

The tactility of everyday experiences, such as the sensation of eating a peach, the sudden downpour of rain on a sunny day, the immense beauty of the act of walking on a sandy beach, sharing a tender moment with a loved one, and so on prove to be more meaningful than they are often believed to be. Nine Days celebrates the intense sensuality of existence, while not disregarding the abject cruelty that often accompanies it, as exemplified by Amanda’s heartbreaking fate and the relentless bullying experienced by a 14-year-old child. Winston Duke delivers the performance of a lifetime as the guarded, infinitely layered Will, displaying a range so visceral that audiences are bound to be swept away by the authenticity of his portrayal.

The other characters, especially Beetz, Skarsgård, and Hale, highlight different aspects of humanity through their measured, grounded performances, elevating the film to the ambit of a fantasy drama that overflows with heart and pathos. In terms of aesthetics, Nine Days is breathtaking to behold, be it in the form of the grained, textured shots of a cozy microcosm in the middle of nowhere, the dozen bulky televisions and VHS tapes seen throughout, or the costumes worn by Will and Kyo in this strange, otherworldly world. Nine Days might just be the most earnest and heartwarming piece of cinema released this year so far, as it is a cinematic experience that is genuinely beautiful and cathartic in nature.

NEXT:  Nine Days Trailer: Winston Duke Offers Souls A Chance To Be Born

Nine Days initially premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. It was released in U.S. theatres on July 30, 2021, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. The film is 124 minutes long and is rated R for mild violence and language.

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The Featherweight

“You gotta think about how you’ll be remembered.” “That’s just it, Bill. Who remembers me?”

This exchange, halfway through Robert Kolodny’s nimble biopic “The Featherweight,” sums to a tee the anxieties at the center of its tragic figure. The man, of course, is two-time Featherweight world champion Willie Pep, who fought more than 230 fights in his career and won more than his fair share of them. Of course, this was in the 1940s and ’50s, as grainy newsreels show us. As we meet him here, it’s 1964, and the now 42-year-old Pep (James Madio) is looking to get back in the ring. And a camera crew is here to capture this erstwhile comeback, which turns Kolodny’s film into a hard-hitting reflection on midlife crisis and fading fame — even as it doesn’t land all of its punches.

Captured as a kind of direct-cinema documentary a la the Maysles, “The Featherweight” plants us firmly as a fly on the wall to Pep’s ambitious climb back into the ring, well past his prime. The doc, so Pep thinks, is meant to celebrate the return of an aging champion, proof positive of his bluster that he’s still got what it takes to compete. But over the next hour and a half, those same cameras merely shine a light on the fissures that exist in his personal and professional lives. That’s the compelling core of Kolodny’s film, mixing a kind of “Raging Bull” ringside character study with the probing interrogation of documentarian and subject.

Madio, a reliable character actor finally getting the kind of starmaking turn he deserves, is endearingly twitchy as Pep — a short-statured Sicilian with plenty of pride to wound. And a career of KOs, ex-wives, and the vagaries of time have certainly landed a few hits. As we meet him, he’s a little too eager to share stories of his glory days; the guys down at the coffee shop seem to like it, but his business manager (Ron Livingston) and old trainer (Stephen Lang) see it for the sad display it is. Every appearance he makes, he’s also haunted by his nemesis, Black fellow featherweight Sandy Saddler (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), whose KO of Pep in his prime makes his parallel descent into obscurity sting all the more. Pep talks a big game about getting back in the fight, but no one wants it; the more aggressively he looks for it, the more pathetic it becomes.

It’s easy to see why he’s chasing these ghosts, though; his home life is hardly better. His third wife, a much younger woman named Linda (Ruby Wolf), is chasing her own budding acting career just as Pep’s step is losing its own pep. His mother (Imma Aiello) is your classic tight-lipped nonna , talking only in Italian around the dinner table so Linda can’t understand the insults. Then there’s Billy Jr. (Kier Gilchrist), a young man with a chip on his shoulder about Pep leaving his mom and the drug problem he can’t seem to shake. Willie Pep might as well change his last name to Loman.

Cinematographer Adam Kolodny (Robert’s brother) captures these intimate tensions in a fascinating simulacrum of period-accurate 16mm; the title designs and fonts all scream ’60s, and it’s easy to lose yourself in the documentary immediacy of the proceedings. Each scene is captured with Cassavetes-like naturalism, all frayed nerves and lived-in quirks among the ensemble. The actors were encouraged to improvise before shooting, which lends a looseness and unpredictability to their performances of Steve Loff’s screenplay. That’s then accentuated by Kolodny’s wavering camera, bobbing and weaving between actors like an expert pugilist.

But all of these tools, and all this period detail, serve a slow-burn tale of vanishing glory that feels like it’s been told before. An aging sportsman past his prime, attempting to recapture his youth as his personal life falls apart? Wake me up if you’ve heard this story before. There are also times where the narrative looseness leads to a sluggish pace, especially in the second act; we’re often left waiting for the good stuff just like Willie is. But it blissfully picks up in its third act, a one-two punch of personal tragedies that only highlight the ways Willie has failed (and been failed by) others, all in the futile search for his lost status.

Most intriguing, though, is the way Kolodny turns his characters against the camera, as they slowly realize the true cost of opening your life up to the cameras. Willie or Linda will slip up, then ask the filmmakers off-camera to “leave that part out.” (That we see it means, of course, they didn’t.) It’s an interesting wrinkle to the drama, the mere presence of the camera reflecting our characters’ selfishness and vulnerability right back at them. It’s subtly handled, a stylistic wrinkle that more than justifies the narrative-doc conceit.

“The Featherweight” elevates its been-there story of middle-aged guys chasing their glory days with some smart, unexpected performances and a genuinely intriguing aesthetic frame. It might not deliver a total knock-out punch, but it gets a few good blows in before the bell rings.

Clint Worthington

Clint Worthington is a Chicago-based film/TV critic and podcaster. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of  The Spool , as well as a Senior Staff Writer for  Consequence . He is also a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and Critics Choice Association. You can also find his byline at RogerEbert.com, Vulture, The Companion, FOX Digital, and elsewhere. 

• James Madio as Guglielmo Papaleo (Willie Pep)
• Ruby Wolf as Linda Papaleo
• Keir Gilchrist as Billy Papaleo Jr.
• Stephen Lang as Bill Gore
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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Nine Days (2021)

March 8, 2022 by Robert Kojder

Nine Days , 2021.

Written and Directed by Edson Oda. Starring Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Bill Skarsgård, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, David Rysdahl, Geraldine Hughes, Arianna Ortiz, Perry Smith, Lisa Starrett, and John Forker.

A reclusive man conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born.

Will (Winston Duke delivering one of the most deeply moving performances of the year so far) watches over the land of the living in Nine Days , jotting down notes on whatever happens to those individuals. It might sound like he is an omnipotent deity, but it’s actually said best by another character that he is more of a cog in a machine. That machine is precisely a remarkably unique system that sees Will as one of many judges of life, conducting a nine-day interview session following the tragic death of one of his favorite humans to live vicariously through.

That would be violinist virtuoso Amanda (Lisa Starrett), who, with no signs of depression or suicidal tendencies, decides to speed up, crash her car, and kill herself. Naturally, this jolts Will, who believes that there has to be another explanation besides what’s evident to us the first time we see it, let alone the number of times Will rewinds the VHS tape to analyze the event. Nevertheless, there is also a vacancy among the humans he observes, springing forth the aforementioned interview process, which turns out to feature souls vying for an opportunity at human life.

Written and directed by Japanese Brazilian filmmaker Edson Oda (also his feature-length narrative debut, a mesmerizing singular transfixing vision that should justifiably garner all sorts of awards attention and open more doors to realizing future projects) is straightforward with the premise, there are a few character reveals that won’t be spoiled. However, for the most part, Nine Days is not a supernatural mystery, so those seeking something heady need not apply. If you are on board with the idea of the likes of Zazie Beetz, Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgard, and others playing somewhat emotionless versions of themselves learning about life and deciding who they want to be and what kind of lifestyle they want to live, to determine what soul goes on to inhabit a human body, that’s enough to come out blown away by what’s here.

Aesthetically, the film is also striking, placing Will in a secluded house in the middle of a desert. The isolation is captured with vast landscape shots, with Will’s only social interaction coming from Benedict Wong’s co-worker Kyo (who is there to observe Will doing his job), who occasionally watches footage of human minds and assists with the selective process forth new life. Small creative choices such as going with a combination of technological devices at the outpost ranging from VHS tapes to projectors give the film a sense of methodical craftsmanship down to every little detail. The same goes for the costume design, which has Will in a more old-fashioned wardrobe.

Nine Days uses this elaborate production design for a series of interviews that start intense (and almost hostile) with Will posing extreme circumstance scenarios such as the ability to take the life of a loved one to save other lives. It shouldn’t surprise that all interviewees generally have different reactions and responses; some are more optimistic, some don’t see the point of such terrorizing questions because they want to live a relaxing life, and some suggest something more violent. In the case of Emma (Zazie Beetz), she refuses to play along with the hypotheticals while demanding more context. Simultaneously, they are told to check out the lives of others to get a further idea of what the meaning of life would be to them. Every day, a member of the group is rejected, but not before having a memory they did enjoy from observing life to be re-created as realistic as possible (making use of holographic screens) before vanishing into nothingness. As you can imagine, some of these sequences are among the most tear-jerking (lots of tears flow in this one), also in part due to the incredible ensemble in top form.

It’s all imaginatively clever to peel away everything from what’s essential to a person, the different ways people can see the world, and how that all connects to someone choosing life. Keep in mind, Will is going through an emotional crisis not only from his pride and joy committing suicide but his entire process facing head-on confrontation from his beliefs and Emma. With that said, every major player gets at least one memorable scene, whether it be Tony Hale getting heated and making a fair point about Will’s mental state and qualifications or Bill Skarsgard recounting a disturbing event he saw browsing other lives. There’s also delicate addressing of the suicide itself and how even with keeping tabs on an individual to this extent, it’s still possible to miss signs of depression or suicidal thoughts.

Where Nine Days goes from this is beautifully life-affirming and wouldn’t work without Winston Duke taking on all of Will’s complexities. It’s a showstopping performance filled with everything from sorrow to regret to nuclear energy to celebratory joy. All of it is heightened by a powerfully sweeping score from Antonio Pinto that is in step with the themes and story every bit of the way. Nine Days more than an outstanding debut; it’s a miraculous and flooring work of art tackling the intricacies of life itself and purpose.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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‘Nine Days’ Review: The meaning of life on a television screen

The high concept is perhaps a little pretentious, but it’s a vehicle for excellent performances cutting to the heart of human experience..

What to Watch Verdict

Don’t go in expecting to fall in love with a whole new world, but maybe you’ll feel a little bit more uplifted about the one you live in.

🌞 The premise is novel, and the humanism of its themes is heartfelt.

🌞 Winston Duke is a standout among a cast full of talent.

🌞 The ultimate philosophical discussion is a bit shallow.

To preface, it is a good thing to incorporate expansive thought experiments into stories that primarily serve as character vehicles. It keeps low-budget and independent cinema from being confined by the constraints of reality while testing the novel methods by which writers and filmmakers can bring larger-than-life ideas to life. So it’s not a pleasure for me to ultimately come to the conclusion that writer-director Edson Oda’s Nine Days is more than a little pretentious. It has an engaging premise, but it never feels fully capitalized upon as it constrains its drama to one-on-one conversations in a few rooms of a single location. That said, the performances on display more than make up for the film’s disinterest in its own metaphysics.

Will (Winston Duke) is a judge of unborn souls who spends his days in literal limbo, a singular house in the middle of a vast desert. He watches the first-person perspectives of his selected souls on television screens and records their important moments in evaluation of whether he made correct choices in sending these souls to Earth. When one of his charges apparently commits suicide in spite of a promising life as a concert violinist, Will becomes obsessed, trying to determine what he missed and whether he was wrong to pick this soul in the first place. Meanwhile, he must select a new soul to be born to fill the vacancy, so new intelligences come to his house to visit over the course of nine days, to observe life-to-come, and hopefully be selected for the vibrancy of life, rather than fade into oblivion.

This cast is ultimately what sells the film, from the supporting roles right on up to the leads. Bill Skarsgård is a stony frontrunner whose disposition towards the atrocities of the world matches with Will’s rattled convictions. Tony Hale brings his trademark comic discomfort to a soul whose aversion to bad times is a test to be overcome. Benedict Wong’s Kyo is not a candidate, but a wandering soul who did not disappear after failing to be born, and his theatrical charisma steals the show in more than a few scenes where Will’s dour disposition threatens to overtake.

Don’t let that convince you that Will isn’t a compelling character. Far from it, Winston Duke brings layers to the character that are only ever hinted at in dialogue but make for a tragic protagonist on a journey of self-discovery, even as he doesn’t realize it. And that personal realization would not be possible without the impetus of Zazie Beetz’s Emma, a somewhat unruly soul whose unwavering determination of people’s goodness stands in stark opposition to Will’s certainty that only the strong can survive a life worth living. As written, the character threatens to tip too far into dream girl territory, since this one woman is the direct cause for Will’s growth without any comparable evolution of her own arc, but Beetz sidesteps the issue by discarding whimsy in favor of muted concern over why Will does not share Emma’s progressive optimism. Their conversations are the key to unlocking the philosophical core of Nine Days , and the give and take between them is perhaps the single most compelling reason to see the film.

Because therein lies the rub. Though the characters and performances make the experience worth having, Nine Days is not nearly so perceptive about the human condition as its intricate setup might imply. Not only does the film rely on Will’s solitude to painstakingly set its stage in a drawn-out first act, but its conclusions about what makes life worth living are almost rote in light of how far the film has to go to reach them. While this isn’t the sort of film where I would advocate exploration of the logic of its world-building – we really don’t need a further romanticized take on the theoretical pre-lives of unborn souls – the high concept of this premise is begging for more of a hook than the simple drama it portends to, regardless of how elevated it becomes in the hands of gifted actors, and especially when its main insight could be condensed to a Hallmark card.

Nine Days is not so convincing in its thesis as to push its audience to a new outlook on life, but it does manage to be enthralling for the characters whose potential lives and unlives remain in the balance. Don’t go in expecting to fall in love with a whole new world, but maybe you’ll feel a little bit more uplifted about the one you live in.

Leigh Monson has been a professional film critic and writer for six years, with bylines at Birth.Movies.Death., SlashFilm and Polygon. Attorney by day, cinephile by night and delicious snack by mid-afternoon, Leigh loves queer cinema and deconstructing genre tropes. If you like insights into recent films and love stupid puns, you can follow them on Twitter.

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Nine Days Movie Review: A Unique Film That Captured My Heart

Nine Days is a movie unlike any other that I have seen. I was hooked from the very start thanks to the unique story and incredible cast.

When I first learned about Nine Days, the thing that caught my attention was the cast. Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Tony Hale, and Bill Skarsgard — how can you go wrong? Several of my friends had seen this movie already and were raving about it, so I went in with high hopes. Sometimes this can be a bad thing because the film won’t live up to the hype, but Nine Days exceeded my expectations!

The premise of the film is that an interviewer, played by Winston Duke, is interviewing several different new souls for their chance to go to Earth and live. This concept feels so unlike anything else I have ever seen before. The story had me intrigued from the start and within just a few minutes I was completely hooked. 

The cinematography and score completely captured me. The music elevated emotions in scenes that needed to be elevated and I must admit, I shed more than a few tears as the story was told. There are heartwarming aspects to this movie, and heartbreaking ones as well. 

While the entire cast is phenomenal, Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz steal the show for me. Their relationship and how it develops throughout this movie is one of the best parts. I loved watching them together. They have real chemistry and I hope to see them do something together again — hey maybe Domino will visit Wakanda! 

In all seriousness though, this film shows us just how versatile Winston Duke is! He is brilliant and can do just about anything. I feel like every movie I see him in, he is a totally different character. And I believe he is that character. 

There is quite a bit of humor in Nine Days as well, mostly thanks to Benedict Wong and Tony Hale. The two of them have some great one liners that had me actually laughing out loud. To go from thinking about a pretty deep message, to cracking up, is pretty rare in a movie so I was happy to have that comedic release now and then.

Another thing that stands out with this movie is some of the scenery. Almost every single outside shot could be captured as a photo and hung on the wall. The lone house in the desert with the fog and the sunsets — absolutely breathtaking.

If I had to nitpick this movie and give you something I didn’t like about it, it is a bit long. The run time is just over two hours long, but it didn’t feel like it to me. That being said, there are some moments that could have been removed to cut out time, and perhaps make it flow a bit better.

Overall Thoughts

Nine Days is a movie like no other and it completely captivated me from the start. The cast is amazing and all work really well together. The concept and story are intriguing and gave me lots to think about. There are moments made me laugh out loud, and moments that had me shedding some serious tears. 

If you are looking for a movie with a unique feel, Nine Days is for you. So many films are repeated concepts, which is fine, but this one feels completely new to me. I rarely watch a movie more than once, and this is one I think I will watch time and time again.

Unfortunately at the time of writing this review, Nine Days is not available anywhere for the general public to watch. However, please keep this one in the back of your head, write it down, and when you can get your hands on it — enjoy it! 

About Nine Days

Will (Winston Duke) spends his days in a remote outpost watching the live Point of View (POV) on TV’s of people going about their lives, until one subject perishes, leaving a vacancy for a new life on earth. Soon, several candidates — unborn souls — arrive at Will’s to undergo tests determining their fitness, facing oblivion when they are deemed unsuitable.

But Will soon faces his own existential challenge in the form of free-spirited Emma (Zazie Beetz), a candidate who is not like the others, forcing him to turn within and reckon with his own tumultuous past. Fueled by unexpected power, he discovers a bold new path forward in his own life.

Making his feature-film debut after a series of highly acclaimed and award-winning short films and music videos, Japanese Brazilian director Edson Oda delivers a heartfelt and meditative vision of human souls in limbo, aching to be born against unimaginable odds, yet hindered by forces beyond their will…

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Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.

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Nine Days (United States, 2020)

The storyline bears a passing resemblance to the one used by Pixar for last year’s Soul . Both films deal with the existential possibility of life before birth and what “qualifications” might result in a pre-soul being granted the opportunity to be born. Soul does a better job with the material than Nine Days , perhaps because the former film is more concerned with developing characters and telling a story than pursuing a metaphysical approach. Oda has claimed that his movie was inspired by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life and Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and it’s easy to see the influences, but those films were more firmly anchored in their own realities and had better-developed narrative frameworks.

Nine Days transpires in a limbo of sorts where a lonely caretaker named Will (Winston Duke) lives in an isolated house in the middle of a desert. With the exception of occasional visits from his friend Kyo (Benedict Wong), he is by himself. He spends most of his day sitting in front of a bank of CRT monitors, peering into the lives of others. At first, we mistake him for a voyeur, but it gradually becomes clear he’s much more. Will’s job is to screen candidates to determine which selections should be sent to Earth to be born. Seemingly, Will’s only qualification for the job is that he once “lived,” although the details of his time in a corporeal body were less-than-happy. The people he watches on the TVs are the ones he sent to be born. Then, his greatest success, a concert violinist named Amanda, commits suicide. Will is devastated and begins to doubt everything about himself, his duty, and the meaning of life. And, while trying to figure out why Amanda killed herself and how he was unaware of a problem, he must choose her replacement.

Nine Days is rich in ideas although some of its thematic material isn’t as deep as Oda believes it to be. Nevertheless, the movie provokes thoughts about the meaning of life, the importance of the present moment, and the question of whether human beings are inherently good and moral individuals (with the miscreants being outliers) or vile monsters (with those who practice kindness as exceptions). At one point, Will laments that he selects flowers while others send pigs to eat them up. The acting is strong, with Winston Duke imbuing Will with a soul-sickness that we feel as much as observe.

Nine Days is likely to appeal to those who prefer experimental explorations into philosophical arenas and don’t mind a dose of pretentiousness. Those who have an affinity for more traditional, narrative-driven motion pictures may be frustrated by the experience. Although Oda’s debut offers glimpses of a potentially gifted director, the project feels unfinished and fails to match his impressive vision with an equally compelling story.

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‘Transformers One’ and the State of the Franchise

Jomi and Steve give a spoiler-free review of the latest Transformers movie!

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Autobots, roll out! Jomi and Steve are back to discuss Transformers One and how it stacks up in the Transformers movie franchise rankings. For those who haven’t seen the movie, don’t worry! We kick things off with a spoiler-free review.

Hosts: Jomi Adeniran and Steve Ahlman Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal

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