Rethink.

Spoil­ers galore ahead.

Pajiba’s review of “9” cov­ers what’s wrong with the movie: the dia­logue is the most press­ing prob­lem, and the story is per­haps not as well-crafted as it could have been.

Those of you who have seen the movie, where dolls (named only with num­bers) who are aspects of the soul/mind have to deal with the prob­lem of a mech­a­nis­tic intellect’s cre­ation, are prob­a­bly won­der­ing how the dolls add up. Here’s a very pro­vi­sional list of what I think at the moment:

1. cau­tion
2. curios­ity
3. mem­ory
4. same as 3, given that mem­ory is dual: one stores a mem­ory, then needs to retrieve it
5. ?
6. mys­ti­cism
7. inde­pen­dence
8. will to power/agency
9. dar­ing

I think you can see why I’ve cho­sen the terms I have: “cau­tion” can rule “curios­ity” and “inde­pen­dence” to a degree when the issue is sur­vival only. It fails to rule them once a rough peace has been cre­ated, and 1’s fight with 9 is explo­sive. More­over, “cau­tion,” “agency” (8 — note how he is inca­pable of doing nearly any­thing with­out strict orders) and “mys­ti­cism” (frag­mented knowl­edge of the past/future) com­bine to form the first polit­i­cal order of the movie. “Cau­tion” claims rule with reli­gious aus­pices (this seems alien to us, but it makes per­fect sense in Greek tragedy), assert­ing that any desire for knowl­edge is an unnec­es­sary risk. It is bol­stered by a real fear of what’s out there, one that can eas­ily turn super­sti­tious, but in this case is per­fectly justified.

For the other “order” is ignor­ing the issue of sur­vival and thriv­ing because of acci­den­tal neglect. I think that’s why 5 (?) and 2 (curios­ity) are stick­ing with 1, 8, 6 ini­tially: there’s room to build at least in the burned out church, and tin­ker and scav­enge. That’s hap­pen­ing with 3 & 4, whom we assume are aided by 7 (“inde­pen­dence”) who has left 1. But again, this isn’t really an order: 7 has excep­tional dex­ter­ity and agility and can fend off the beast — per­haps the last machine — that wishes to res­ur­rect what may have been its “source” towards the open­ing of the movie. But the beast has no inter­est in destroy­ing a dark library — yet — and “inde­pen­dence” can only fend it off with­out decoys, with­out some­one ready to make a sac­ri­fice. And there you have the first prin­ci­ple of order — not merely the will­ing­ness to use vio­lence, but the will­ing­ness to accept the con­se­quences of such a use.

1 comes off awfully in the movie, even as 9 causes death, some­thing that for all of 1’s faults he could almost never be accused of (he does send 2 out on a risky mis­sion and jus­ti­fies this in the harsh­est way. How much of this is him try­ing to kill 2 is debat­able, given that 1’s cold­ness can be called an aware­ness of risk). And the thing about death — despite the movie’s “they’re free now” line at the end — is that we, and per­haps the dolls, have the expec­ta­tion that after being “trapped” in the machine they will rise again. That expec­ta­tion is utterly foiled, lead­ing one to won­der if 1 knew the truth all along: that death is final, life is a gift, and wait­ing out the beast that begins the movie is a per­fectly sound strat­egy. What is not sound is to repeat the mis­take of man.

What is the mis­take of man? Is it sim­ply ruth­less­ness, being bes­tial? The movie indi­cates this to a degree, but when one con­sid­ers 9’s destruc­tive­ness, it isn’t that sim­ple. It actu­ally looks like the mis­take is com­bin­ing our destruc­tive ten­den­cies with our cre­ative pow­ers: in other words, order comes about because peo­ple under­stand limit, that vio­lence has con­se­quences. To com­bine cre­ation and destruc­tion is to sug­gest that there is no limit.

5 sits in the mid­dle, with one eye, and only leaves the realm of cau­tion because he owes another his life. He is respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the trap which kills the ptero­dactyl and many of the machines via the bar­rel bomb. He has to learn from 2, 7 and 9 how to han­dle him­self, despite the imple­ments and train­ing he is equipped with from 2.  1, it should be noted, is very effec­tive: he gets his can­non built and hurts the machine; he removes his cape and destroys the ptero­dactyl; he sac­ri­fices him­self and allows the final vic­tory to be won.

I think 5 is the ques­tion of look­ing either at the past or the future, and it makes sense then that the list has par­al­lels built into it: 1 and 9 par­al­lel most sharply, as do 2 and 8; the two dolls ded­i­cated to mem­ory are what mys­ti­cism and inde­pen­dence depend on, they’re not actively seek­ing new knowl­edge although happy when they can get it. At the end, I think we’re left with 9, 7, 3, 4 only. The past is gone and so is the fear­ful piety that char­ac­ter­ized it: the soul, no longer alien­ated from the earth, regen­er­ates life anew. The movie is pious in the way Tolkien was: the remain­ing char­ac­ters are now liv­ing their faith, no longer bound by super­sti­tion, and fully aware of their mor­tal­ity and purpose.

• Adden­dum to “Justice’s Required Redeemer: On The Dark Knight” (spoilers)
• Thoughts on “Watch­men” (Movie)
• Justice’s Required Redeemer: On “The Dark Knight”
• The Decline and Fall of Woody Allen
• Humil­ity vs. Low Expec­ta­tions — On “Star Trek” (2009)

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