Nine Lives
by Rodrigo Garc?a
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Andy Umberger, Aomawa Baker, Elpidia Carrillo, Mary Pat Dowhy, Miguel SandovalDirector: Rodrigo Garc?a
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Nine Lives
Movie Review: Excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
Need the sins of the father be visited upon the son? Not if the terrific- nay, great, little 2005 film, Nine Lives, written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, is Exhibit A. Garcia is the son of famed Nobel Prize winning magical realist fictionist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, of Love In A Time Of Cholera and One Hundred Years Of Solitude fame. Yet, despite that fame, the father's work, in novels and short fictions, is usually baroque and anomic in narrative, and hollow and superficial in characterization. In this film, his son, however, shows how quickly and deftly a whole life can be sketched and distilled- if not contained, in just ten to twelve real time minutes, doing something his father never did- create complex and compelling characters and situations. He has a human touch in his art that his father has always lacked with his magical realism.
This hour and fifty-two minute film is, in short, antithetical to everything Garcia's father's art stands for. And, as a filmgoer, you should be very thankful for that! I'd never heard of this director, but heard good things about this film. However, I never take such recommendations too seriously, because for every great film like this I am told I need to see pretentious trash, like Crash, this past year's Oscar winner, an ensemble film that only wishes it could have a fraction of the hyper-realism this film does. Prior to this film, Garcia had directed commercials, some television episodes, including The Sopranos, and two prior low budget films- 2001's Ten Tiny Love Stories, and 2000's Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her.
The film that this most reminded me of was Jill Sprecher's great 2001 film, 13 Conversations About One Thing, save that that film wove all its character's plights into a single loose thread, while this film is simply nine short films with a few crossover characters. Jim Jarmusch's recent compilation film of related short subjects, Coffee And Cigarettes, also mines this territory and style, but with nowhere near the success of Nine Lives. Of the nine segments, all named after the lead female character within, for Garcia seems to have a reputation as a woman's filmmaker, seven are brilliant or great, and the two weaker pieces are still good, solid films that experiment with the medium. However, any short story collection that was published, with seven of its nine tales being great would become a classic.... Other films, like Magnolia and Grand Canyon, try this overlapping technique, but they all tie things up at the end, often with all the characters meeting. These films are merely moments that will be big memories in the minds of each of the protagonists, in years to come. The backstories are implied so well, subtly and quickly, that it's not at all difficult to get into each scene within minutes of their starting. Yet, to know everything in those backstories would beg triteness and lengthen the film so that only two, perhaps three, of the stories, could still fit within.
Garcia shows great command of his medium with his objective Chekhovian writing and zero endings, for what could have easily become a New Agey or Chick Flick piece of schlock. Unlike such films as Time Code, this experiment in filmic narrative works, and is a worthy descendant of the filmic experiments that Ingmar Bergman pioneered in the 1960s. It should have been one of the films nominated for an Oscar, along with other underappreciated films like The New World, Match Point, and Shopgirl. But, Hollywood keeps on churning out schlock like Brokeback Mountain and Crash instead, while films like this are shunted aside. Fight back, watch this film, talk about it with others, and make sure that the powerbrokers know that there is a market for such films. It's the only way there will be more of them.
Summary of Nine Lives
Nine Lives is an award winning, moving exploration of the individual experiences of nine everyday women as told through nine single unbroken takes. As characters from one story reappear in supporting roles in others, director Rodrigo Garcia interweaves a grand tapestry of storytelling as he reveals nine unique women who meet the travails and disappointments of life with a resilience that is at once heartening and heartbreaking.Nine Lives is a collection of related short stories, each a snippet from a woman's life, each shot in one uninterrupted ten-minute take. Remarkably, this never becomes a gimmick; the skillfully writing and directing make the restriction feel essential to each story. A woman in prison (Elpidia Carillo, Bread and Roses) struggles to maintain some kind of balance despite her circumstances; the ex-wife (Amy Brenneman, Judging Amy) gets a cool reception at the funeral of her ex-husband's second wife; a mother (Glenn Close, Dangerous Liaisons) and her daughter (Dakota Fanning, War of the Worlds) have a picnic at a graveside. Each story deftly escalates the emotional circumstances; only one story feels at all forced. The acting is superb throughout--hardly surprising from a cast that includes Sissy Spacek (In the Bedroom), Holly Hunter (The Piano), Aidan Quinn (Benny & Joon), Molly Parker (Deadwood), and many more, all superb and clearly relishing the opportunity to perform such a long and complex scene (most movies rarely have more than thirty seconds without an edit). If there's a criticism, it's that the stories are almost unrelentingly serious; anxiety, melancholy, yearning, and regret are thoroughly explored--a little more humor might have provided more contrast and variety. Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her), who shares with his father Gabriel Garcia Marquez a fascination with interconnected lives. --Bret Fetzer
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