Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with MiraJeff's opinion on Michael Winterbottom's now infamously graphic 9 SONGS, a film that has been making the festival rounds since Cannes last year. Ol' MiraJeff goes into to some pretty graphic detail, so mothers... hide the youngins' eyes... for the pervs out there... turn down the dimmer, put on the Barry White and pull up a chair. Let's get it on!
Hello AICN, MiraJeff back with a review of Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs. To be honest, I have no idea how to begin this review. I’ve been dreading writing it since I saw the film last week. I feel like to give it a negative review would be writing the film off as mere pornography, which it certainly isn’t, but to give it a positive review would be misleading, as this film is not really enjoyable on any level. For those of you not looking to read about themes or context, the synopsis of the film is simple. It’s about sex and music. There are others who will wish to understand the film on a deeper level, and all I can offer these people is the suggestion, not the recommendation, to see the film for themselves.
9 Songs made waves at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for its graphic sex scenes and justifiably so. You certainly see "more" in 9 Songs than say, Todd Solondz’s Happiness, Larry Clark’s Kids, or Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. The difference is that you just don’t feel anything about the characters engaged in the act. Perhaps this effect is intended by Winterbottom, as his characters don’t seem to feel anything about themselves outside of the bedroom, where their sexuality roams free.
The lovers caught up in Winterbottom’s experiment are Matt (Kieran O’Brien) and Lisa (Margo Stilley). Matt is a glaciologist whose trips to Antarctica serve to underscore the themes of emptiness and loneliness. He meets Lisa at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert at Brixton Academy in London. Immediately there is a connection, a shared spark of electricity that lands the two of them in bed by night’s end.
While most of us guys would consider that a great start to any relationship, Matt’s relationship with Lisa is inevitably doomed. We gather this much from Matt’s opening narration where he recalls memories of his time with her. 9 Songs is a film about Matt’s memories, which are limited to concerts and sex. This makes sense I suppose.
If you have broken up with a woman you love, or loved, or never loved in the first place, I suppose you aren’t sitting around missing the little things she used to do. The notes she’d hide in your shirt pocket after doing your laundry, or the way she’s write love notes on the dinner plates, so after you devoured her finest spaghetti you’d be staring at a saucy dish that read "I Love You." No, if you’ve broken up with an attractive woman, the thing you probably miss most and think about most often is the sex. The way she’d chew on the bottom of your ear, or run her hand up your thigh, and disregard your nasty swamp ass. The most vivid memories are the ones where you’re probably lying next to each other, staring into each other’s eyes, panting and heaving like two exhausted animals after a roll in the hay, whispering to each other about how incredible the other was. As a man, Matt is no different. He longs to hold her and touch her again. Not laugh with her or talk with her, but to experience her body and all it has to offer him.
The sexual adventures Matt and Lisa embark on together range from BDSM to sensual lovemaking. At times, Lisa makes Matt beg for her body and his own sweet release. They lay in bed, whimpering like dogs, her head tilted back, mouth open in an inviting “O” shape, their hips writhing in ecstasy, sheets rumpled, a feeling of elation coursing through their bodies. During their tantalizing, titillating sex scenes, he makes her nipples dance with the flick of his tongue or the pinch of his fingers. He kneads her breasts, which are refreshingly petite. Stilley and O’Brien are definitely not the best looking couple but their bodies represent primal nature. He is not circumcised while she is aesthetically pleasing, all sharp angles and well-defined lines. We are shown glimpses into the intimacy of their relationship. She makes shaving cream handprints on his back. In the bathtub, she gives him a romantically perverse foot job. At the beach, the water is so cold that neither of them wants to go in, but to prove his love, he rushes in blindly, much like he has rushed into his relationship with Lisa. Sometimes, she is so overwhelmed with passion, it scares her, and she wants to physically hurt Matt, biting his lip so hard it bleeds. He is in love, but it is clear she is not. She is merely free-associating love with Matt, though that doesn’t stop her from sucking his balls and jacking him off all over his own stomach in unnecessarily graphic detail. Through more disparate times, they share lines of coke together.
The music in 9 Songs, while seemingly a distraction from the story Winterbottom is trying to tell, may actually be its most entertaining parts. The songs themselves have been careful chosen to guide the viewer on their journey through Matt’s memories. Each band, bathed in a wash of blinking fluorescent lights, lives and breathes sexuality. The bands were all aware that they’d be performing for Winterbottom’s cameras and their energies are well-captured by their performances, though the low sound quality sometimes distorts the sound. The music usually swells to a crescendo, climaxing in tune with Matt and Lisa’s bodies. Everyone in the audience’s hands are raised, clapping and cheering in beat with the music, reaching out as if to physically feel the music. Matt comments about how at a concert, there could be 5,000 people in the room but you can still feel along. Sometimes, people go to hear live music not so it can pick them up, but so it can let them down. One of the last songs, a piano piece by Michael Nyman, was especially haunting and beautiful. Winterbottom’s camera lingers on him from afar, just watching a man play music from his soul, perhaps the most intimate relationship one can have with an inanimate object.
Throughout the last sex scene, the camera angle makes it feel pornographic, like something we’re not supposed to feel comfortable watching. 9 Songs is shot like a documentary to make the viewer feel like they aren’t watching characters in a scripted relationship, but real people in a real relationship whose most intimate moments we’re given permission to intrude on. The film plays with the themes of performance and beauty, though Matt’s first reference to the latter is to describe Antarctica, not the woman he loves. Antarctica is the perfect setting to feel “ice-o-lated,” and it’s there that Matt feels the love burn inside of him once Lisa is gone, reflecting on their failed romance.
Winterbottom’s experiment in human sexuality and perversity runs 69 minutes long (coincidence?) and that’s more than enough time, considering most guys watch porn on average for15-20 minutes at a time. Who am I to say whether his experiment failed or succeeded? All I can tell you is to keep your curiosity at bay for 6 months, save your money, and rent this sucker on DVD. If you thought The Brown Bunny was a waste of time and money, that film was 10 times more entertaining than this one. 9 Songs is certainly an eyebrow raiser, but it probably won’t raise anything else. The film opens this weekend in Los Angeles and has already bowed in New York.
This is MiraJeff signing off, but fear not mortals; I’ll be back next week with reviews of Chumscrubber and Pretty Persuasion. Now if only Eli Roth would invite me to a Hostel screening…
