Will is frustrated by her and yet is strangely drawn to her, too. When presented with a hypothetical scenario and asked what she would do, she sometimes says, "I don't know." Unheard of. She can't play by the rules of Will's questionnaire. One of the candidates, Emma (Beetz), is different than the others. The actors help in this, approaching the material with vulnerability and intelligence.Įach scene shows the process unfolding. Rules are made to be broken, and Oda's script does. But there are plenty of very "talky" films that are riveting. It's common to hear people repeat, ad nauseum, that "show, not tell" is an important rule. The scenes are long and often deal in very difficult metaphysical and ethical questions.
When music shows up, it has great resonance and power.
There is a score by Antonio Pinto but it drops out for long stretches. The strength of "Nine Days" is not so much the scenario (although that is imaginative and well-constructed) but the mood Oda sets, the clarity with which he establishes this world, how it operates, its rules and traditions. Duke does a wonderful job at establishing Will's normal character so we can instantly perceive that something has changed. Meanwhile, he works with each candidate, putting them through their paces. Did he miss something? How could this happen? He takes the loss hard. He searches his files for a clue to her state of mind. Right before the new batch of candidates show up, Will was horrified at footage of Amanda, the violinist, crashing her car on the way to a concert (the television screen switches to color bars and then goes black). Will explains that once they are born on earth, they will forget all that has happened, but "you will still be you" (the implication being that we arrive on this earth with essences already in place). Played by Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgård, Arianna Ortiz, David Rysdahl and Zazie Beetz, these candidates arrive with different personalities and sensibilities, and diverse attitudes towards the process. New candidates walk across the stretch of desert and knock on his door. She is "his." He keeps meticulous file folders on all of his "picks," storing away carefully labeled VHS tapes of every moment of their lives. The violin prodigy was one of Will's picks, and he watches over her life on the television screen with almost unbearable emotion. He comes at this process with a stern and inflexible command. And so he understands the world, he understands humanity. He was once "chosen" by a figure just like himself. He puts them through a rigorous nine-day process. Will is in charge of evaluating all unborn souls, choosing which ones get to move on, and enter the world as new life. What this all means becomes clear in the well-crafted opening sequences, with their deliberate pacing, and disinclination to rush or over-explain. They stand at attention, staring at the small screen. Will and Kyo are dressed up for the concert. In a small clapboard house, surrounded by forbidding desert, co-workers Will ( Winston Duke) and Kyo ( Benedict Wong) watch a video recording of a violin prodigy's concerto, playing on one of the screens in the wall of vintage televisions, each one connected to an old-school rickety VCR. He grounds the otherworldly world in the familiar. There's a moment early on that shows Oda's sensitivity at accumulating small everyday moments in service to the story being told.
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