KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #28: NINE DAYS (2021, wri/dir Edson Oda, USA)

“You are being considered for the amazing opportunity that is life.”

I have not heard a single solitary word about this movie, not a peep, not a breath. Then I listened to last week’s episode of the podcast Filmspotting, which mentioned it in passing. One of the two hosts had seen it and was recommending it strongly to the other host. The last time such a recommendation of a somewhat under the radar film, (a great deal less under the radar than this one) was The Sparks Brothers, and we all remember how that is now one of my favorite movies of the year. I was hoping that lightning would strike twice, and boy did it ever.

Everybody has a genre that speaks to them, a genre that they will go see/read/listen to at the merest mention, quality be damned. Sometimes these genres are very broad, sometimes extremely specific, and mine is a narrow slice indeed. If I hear that a movie is about people waiting to be born, or going somewhere after they die, or guardian angels, even obliquely, I am in like Flynn. My beloved A Matter of Life and Death, Inside Out, For Heaven’s Sake, Heaven Can Wait, the other Heaven Can Wait (directed by the master Ernst Lubitsch!), anything like that I am all over. Nine Days is such a movie.

We see a man, Will, (Winston Duke), alone in a house, watching a wall of TVs, which we notice seem to be all POV shots. After a while, we realize that he is watching people’s lives. When one of the TVs goes dark, he needs to find someone to fill it, so several new souls arrive in order to basically audition for the opportunity to be born.

Will is a guardian, not a guardian angel, because he cannot do a single thing to guide or help the souls he watches, but he is the one who chooses them to be born and have the opportunity to live a human life.

Winston Duke is terrific as the buttoned-down, tightly held in check Will, and so different from the wide, expansive roles he played in Black Panther and Us, that I didn’t even realize it was him.

We also have the great Benedict Wong as another watcher, though not a guardian, because he never was alive. I don’t think I have ever heard him perform in his real English accent before, he is wonderful and hilarious.

Zazie Beetz, Tony Hale (also unrecognizable with hair and a beard), and Bill Skarsgård play three of the souls trying to be born, and they are all great, but will someone please tell me why Zazie Beetz isn’t a gigantic star yet? She is utterly, utterly transcendent as Emma, a true original, that Will cannot make head nor tail of. She and Winston Duke should be a team and make one hundred movies together and I will pay cash money to see all of them.

Speaking of true originals, Edson Oda is the writer/director, this being his debut, and I am looking forward with great anticipation to see what comes next from that mind.I saw the film several days ago, and have not stopped thinking of it, and dreaming of it. I cried through most of it, though it is not as sad as all that. It is a beautiful, splendid, mesmerizing film, and it makes me want to thank my guardian for the gift of my beautiful life.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog