Why "Nine" is a 10. (EXTRA CRITICUM)

L to R: The three Guidos: Daniel Day Lewis, Raul Julia, Marcello Mastroianni

Finally saw “Nine” yesterday. I almost didn’t bother, after all the critical sniping. (Seriously: what IS it with you critics? Do you hate the musical form? Or are you just trying to take down Rob Marshall on his sophomore movie musical? You slammed Marshall for repeating himself - but there’s a difference between repeating yourself and developing a style.)

Honestly, “Nine” is a fantastic movie – better than “Chicago” in many ways - and it may be the first fully adult musical I’ve seen since “Cabaret.” It’s about how real people live and love – ok, ok, at least it gives the illusion of being about real grown-up people. (Which is a big achievement, really, when you think about it, since the people are oversized, outsized creatures of the silver screen.)

I’d seen the 2003 revival on Broadway – the one starring Antonio Banderas (who was quite good). I really liked the performances and the set, which burst into rivers of water in Act II, but I had a hard time following the through-line. Plus it was, after all, a play about making a movie, which is always a little bit of a jagged dichotomy for me to wrap my mind around unless there’s multimedia involved. The movie is a movie about making a movie, which somehow makes more sense to me.

In the film, the story is clearer than ever: adapted from Fellini’s “8 ½”, it’s about film director (and Fellini doppelganger) Guido Contini, who has 10 days until the first shooting day of the movie that will launch him back to the top of the biz after a string of flops. One big trouble: he hasn’t written a word of the movie yet, and has no idea what it’s going to be about. Will Guido make his film? Or will he fail? The scene is set.

While Guido tries to figure out what he’s doing, he flees to a spa and juggles the emotions and often the bodies of a number of powerful women in his life, including wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard), mistress Carla (Penelope Cruz), his big star (Nicole Kidman). Along for the ride are a reporter from Vogue (Kate Hudson) and his crusty costume designer (Judi Dench) – plus the ghostly memories of two long-gone women who left their mark on him: his loving but disapproving religious mother (Sophia Loren) and the whore who danced for him as a young boy, Saraghina (Fergie).

These performances, especially by the women, are uniformly excellent. Chief honors go to… well, I guess the really lovely and amazing Marion Cotillard. She’s beyond words. And to Fergie, in a brief role, but one in which she sings “Be Italian,” the only bona fide hit from the show… and she owns it. Nicole Kidman, playing Contini’s big star, reminds us why she’s a star. (Having a real star in this part is a big big plus.) Oh, yeah – how can I forget Penelope Cruz as the sexpot mistress who is, inside a full woman who loves and loves and burns and hurts. Judi Dench can really sing – but better still, she can unfurl a cutting quip like nobody’s business. And Kate Hudson, who I’ve never seen at her best since “Almost Famous” is a burst of joy and ‘70’s-boots-made-for-walkin’ in her big number. Really, all these ladies are fantastic, bar none.

But back to style, and back to Marshall, who helms this musical with a steady hand. And make no mistake: movie musicals are hard stuff – and a hard sell these days. I had a friend in college who proclaimed that he hated opera and musicals because “people in “real life” don’t just start singing.” And yes, of course he’s right! But lots of things happen in movies, operas and plays that don’t happen in real life. We wouldn’t want to limit art to ONLY the “real,” would we? (Answer: NO.)

Still, some firm decisions have to be made when making a film musical these days. The choices are few: either have people break into song from the first moments (“Hairspray”); or have them sing songs in context of a stage performance (“Cabaret”). Or do as Marshall did in “Chicago,” where the musical numbers mostly exist in Roxie Hart’s stage struck, fame-addled mind. Whatever happens, it seems the decision must be clear from the get-go or disaster ensues: I recall watching “Dreamgirls,” where the first few songs were mostly presented as numbers sung by onstage bands – but about halfway through the movie characters starting singing to each other. As soon as they did, the audience hooted and laughed.

Marshall’s setup for the “Nine” songs isn’t exactly what it was in “Chicago.” He now broadens the POV just a little a bit: the songs are still in the mind, but now sometimes it’s the inner world of Contini, and sometimes it’s the inner world of the other women in the director’s life. It’s true that no one still breaks openly into song in Marshall’s musicals (would the public stand for it?) - but more so than in “Chicago,” he’s exploring how song can convey the inner emotional state of more than one character.

In doing so, he allows other points of view… and maybe, just maybe, offers glad tidings of the rebirth of the screen musical as we once knew it. Perhaps Marshall is slowly inoculating us to this weird form, the movie musical, which once was so familiar but has now gotten out of our systems. Maybe that’s Marshall’s plot: to bring us bit by bit back into a world where many characters in a film can break into song in the course of their spoken scenes and conversations. So maybe he’ll eventually move towards letting them do so without having them slip into a reverie.

Whatever the setup, Marshall has a unique sense of the connection between emotional truth and music. Part of it, of course, is the casting – the scenes towards the end between Luisa and Guido (and between Guido and Carla, and Guido and Kidman’s character) are all searing, honest, and affecting, and the songs flow in and out of them seamlessly.

Oh, I have a quibble or two. I could have used more Sophia Loren (who couldn’t?). More specifically, I would have liked to see a little bit more of a clear reason for why Guido’s mother was there, and how she shaped the man Contini became.

And while, as I’ve said, the women are all excellent, at the top of their game – I have some qualms about Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance. I don’t quite buy his Italian accent… and (though I know this will sound crazy) – I just can’t really get over the fact that I know he’s British-Irish, not actually Italian (or even Mediterranean in any wway). Being Italiano is a perhaps Guido's defining characteristic. So while neither Broadway’s Raul Julia nor Antonio Banderas were themselves Italian, their dark good looks and hot demeanors were, I suppose, an easier stand-in for Italian than is Day-Lewis. No matter: Day-Lewis is still a damn fine actor and he sizzles when he’s with the women.

Oh, and one more thing: there are some great film images that beg to be seen on a big screen.

the shot of Fergie and a huge chorus of women arrayed in a long line that takes up the whole screen
Nicole Kidman emerging from the darkness
Penelope Cruz, all pink lace and flesh, swinging seductively on ropes
Day-Lewis in his little blue car – as in his backseat, lithe writhing women appear and disappear as the car darts behind columns of a Roman ruin.
And perhaps the most glamorous, best image of all: Marion Cotillard’s face in her character’s early screen test for Guido.