"Nine Days" Is Easily the Best Film of 2020

And Has Quickly Become My Favorite Movie of All Time

The film Nine Days is a beautiful, haunting, existential, and ultimately inspiring movie that seeks to wake everyone up from the slumber that arises from the relentless pursuits of our goal-oriented culture.

The film was written and directed by Edson Oda and was his first screenplay. Prior to writing the script, Edson didn't think of himself as a writer at all, and if I recall correctly he partially wrote it as a personal challenge to see if he could write anything at all. Plus, he's Japanese Brazilian, and English is not his native language. This all seems to make Edson out to be an unlikely hero.

Here's a summary of the movie, in Edson's own words:

This is a drama sci-fi and it happens in the distant reality, and in this distant reality we have interviewers, and they interview souls, to choose the one soul to be born. During this process, which lasts nine days, we're going to show the process with one of the interviewers, Will, and we're going to see which soul he's going to choose, which will be the one that will be born, and all of the other souls will just disappear, and no longer exist.

When asked about the origin of the movie, what inspired it, he said the following:

The movie origin comes from idea that we all have this goal-oriented mind, that we need to achieve something, and I think what if what we have right now is the achievement, we know we have this life, and instead of thinking "oh, I want that car or I want this or that war or something", we already won the war, which is to be born and experience the present.

Edson has given different responses to the question of what the inspiration was for the movie (from the looks of it, he did an awful lot of interviews and perhaps experienced some interview fatigue). Here's a different answer:

The main inspiration, for the main character, is my uncle. When he was fifty and was depressed he committed suicide. He was a such a talented and sensitive person. Then I remember at that time it was almost like we had forgotten everything that he had done so far and everyone who heard about the news focused so much on what he did when he took his life and it was very impactful for me in seeing that now and trying to understand what he went through and when I was writing Nine Days I was pretty much trying to reconnect with my uncle and at the same time instead of just judging him through what he did more trying to see the life that he lived and try to celebrate his life as well.

The Most Compelling Theme In the Movie

Head's up: this section has spoiler information contained within. Caveat reader!

One of my favorite themes of the movie is an internal struggle that haunts Will throughout. Apparently, he's the only character in the movie that's been alive before. He was a soul, he applied to be born via the nine-day interview process, he was selected, and he was subsequently born to begin his human experience.

Apparently (and there's not a lot of backstory given to this detail), the feelings of people who have been alive before are deeper, and more visceral, than those of the souls (who have not yet been alive). Because Will has been alive, he understands the depth and realness of potential feelings he might now experience, and so he goes to great lengths to avoid experiencing them again, because "They might remind me of what it's like to be alive".

What I love about this theme is that Will's suppression of what he really feels (what he really loves) is thinly veiled indeed. Here are some clues:

The first clue is seen during the part of the interview in which he says "Pull the chair!. You can see the thespian steam boiling through the seams of that kettle. He's just aching to act again, from the depths of his soul.
The next clue is that Will is the only interviewer who offers to try to recreate a soul's favorite memory when they're not chosen for the position of being born (and therefore their disappearance is inevitable). This suggests to me that he's honoring the idea of "feeling things deeply" by attempting to allow someone to re-experience their favorite memory.
And the last [big] clue is that he clearly feels very deeply about the loss of Amanda, a soul he had previously chosen to be born, and spends quite a bit of time obsessing about what clues might have missed that might have caused him to select someone else for the position of being born. During these scenes, he's clearly "feeling deeply" and seems very conflicted about this. The inner conflict seems to be between treating interviewing as "just a job" vs feeling real pain when the soul you've chosen is born and they end their own life (their gift) prematurely. He's tacitly admitting that he's grown quite attached to Amanda over the years, and in the end, feels a kinship between her and himself.

I find this theme to be brilliant. It's almost like Edson is daring us to ask ourselves "What do you care about? What is it that you feel deeply, and why?".

In the end, Will achieves a catharsis. He acts again, and feels once again, as he did when he was alive. It's easily the most powerful scene in the movie and allows the movie to reach it's triumphant goal of getting us to ask ourselves "Why am I alive?"

There's An Awful Lot To Like About This Movie

I love so many scenes in this movie, from the simple and funny (e.g.: when Alexander says to Will "You really like those two colors, don't you?") to the more dramatic (when you can see the spit fly out of Will's mouth when he shouts "Pull the chair!"), and while I've never attempted to write a movie review, here are some of things I loved about Nine Days:

(These are in no particular order)

Winston Duke plays the main character, Will (the interviewer), and I think his portrayal of Will in this movie is incredibly good. He's so compelling, real, and raw, and his soliloquy in the last scene of the movie is a five minute master class on acting. I don't know if he was ever nominated for any awards for this role, but he clearly should have been.
I think the storyline is beautiful. The movie is always upsetting to me, to watch, but in a good way, and when I'm done watching it, I feel inspired, hopeful, and grounded. It almost seems like the movie re-centers me and re-aims me to focus on what's important. I think Edson Oda achieves his goal for anyone who watches the movie and pays attention.
It's a very "analog" movie, in that there's really no CGI. It's refreshing to see a movie rely on the story and the characters rather than on tricks and gimmicks. The hand-crafted re-creation of some of the souls' favorite memories reinforces this, as does the wall of old-school big boxy TVs. The overall set looks like it was tiny, and the spartan nature of this really adds to the movie.
There are so many great scenes, but one that I think is just so hauntingly beautiful is the recreation of Maria's favorite memory: riding a bike through city streets and the countryside, to the song Eu Na Rua (The song was written by Antonio Pinto and the Portuguese translates to "Me On the Street"). It's such a tender, touching, beautiful, and upsetting scene, and is one of the best scenes in any movie I've ever watched.
Every actor does an excellent job. Zazie Beetz (Emma), Winston Duke (Will), Bill Skarsgard (Kane), Benedict Wong (Kyo), Davie Ryshalh (Mike), Tony Hale (Alexander), and Arianna Ortiz (Maria): they're all fantastic.
The last lines of the movie are brilliant, haunting, and beautiful:

   "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
   Missing me one place search another,
   I stop someplace waiting for you."

BTW: I have a theory about the name of the character Kyo. In Japanese, the number nine in romaji is written as "kyou" (きゅう in hiragana), and during the movie, Kyo's name is alternatively pronounced "kyo" and "kyu" .. but either way, his name is based on the number nine (recall that Edson is Japanese).

Some Useful Links about "Nine Days"

(These are in no particular order either...)

A link to poem `Song of Myself` by Walt Whitman, which is excerpted and condensed for the soliloquy in the last scene.
A review the focuses heavily on the the poem and how it relates to the movie.
The IMDB Interview with the cast from the Sundance Film Festival.
The Collider Interview with the cast, also from the Sundance Film Festival.
The IMDB link to the movie.
The interview where Edson talks about his uncle

The Soliloquy

The last scene in this movie should have earned Winston Duke some serious accolades. It's a beautiful scene, and I love the part where Emma joins in with him both to scream and to march with flailing arms. The last three lines are as perfect as dialog gets, and remind me of people I've known and cared about who have passed away, and how much I miss them.

Have you ever reckoned the earth much?

Spend this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

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.

My tongue, every atom of my blood,
Born here, from parents born here.

And their parents the same, as their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old and in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd 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 belch'd 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 in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and greeting the 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.