9
Director: Shane Acker
Writer: Story by Shane Acker, Screenplay by Pamela Pettler
Producers: Timur Bekmambetov, Tim Burton, Dana Ginsburg, Jinko Gotoh, Jim Lemley
Featuring the Vocal Talents of: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Fred Tatasciore, Alan Oppenheimer
How small and fragile these creatures are; and what ingenious courage they show in spite of it. 9, a visually-arresting animated film created by director Shane Acker, features tiny sentient burlap dolls with button eyes, which Acker dubs “stitchpunks”. They huddle like a lonely orphan family in the ruins of the world, wondering for what purpose their late father (a human scientist voiced by Alan Oppenheimer) created them; while out in fields of junk, a malevolent force stalks them.
The stitchpunks debuted in Acker’s Academy Award-nominated animated short of the same title, and already their evocative form and mechanical resourcefulness were well-established. In the short, though, they were mute; for this feature-length version – which expands on the story and provides an origin for them – they have voices, each one tinged with mourning and melancholy.
That sense of sadness and struggle in Acker’s apocalyptic vision packs a wallop – it’s like someone invaded the world of WALL*E and front-loaded it with even more pessimism and mortality. This distinguishes it in the field of American animation – it shows you can make a feature when you have more dreams than dollars, and in doing so you can also release the obligation to be all-ages sugar-y spectacle, and plumb other moods.
There are retro touches in the expressionist curves and old record turntables that make up the ruined civilization on display, and its story – about machines that overthrew their creators – goes all the way back to Prometheus by way of The Matrix. But 9’s most obvious influences are actually modern videogames. I particularly thought of the landmark Final Fantasy VII when taking in the stately expanse of its techno-graveyard landscape.
This is fresh and thrilling stuff to see on a movie screen, but Acker makes the error of letting the videogame medium spill over into the storytelling department. Its characters are more iconic than rounded and the pacing is thoroughly game-like, alternating with little smoothness between scenes of exposition and peril. The characters talk, catch us up on past and present events, then before they can get too comfortable, something crashes through the wall and the chase is on once again.
Nine stitchpunks were made, and the last (Elijah Wood) is just coming into consciousness when the movie begins. He has a blend of heroic young traits – curiosity, determination, loyalty – and in his wanderings he finds others of his tribe, like the noble explorer #2 (Martin Landau), the faithful tinkerer #5 (John C. Reilly), and the dauntless warrior #6 (Jennifer Connelly). They, under the self-appointed leadership of the close-minded elder #1 (Christopher Plummer), are seemingly the only life left on the planet, and live in fear of a mechanical beast left behind from the war that wiped out humanity.
It is so immediately harrowing that they would even think to make battle against such an enemy with scissor blades and fire; but this they do, and the creatures they fight evolve into ever-more nightmarish forms each time they are thwarted. Most memorable to me is one that moves like a snake, and dangles fake stitchpunks from its appendages to lure in its prey.
This a movie about extremes of scale: The yawning silence of a dead planet invaded by the din of lethal violence. The tiny, soft, and organic pitted against the great metal that has neither remorse nor soul. Acker knows how to stir and excite his audience with this material, but since he is more generic than poetic in his dramatic expediency, the ultimate result isn’t a grand canvas, more like an evocative pop-up book. Since the stakes are an ebb of life so infinitesimal it is hard to imagine any other outcome but its snuffing, the movie’s ultimate smallness makes the end of the world seem too easy a thing – available (literally) at the touch of a button.
This mis-formulation takes nothing away from Acker’s skill in bringing his creations to life – he has a knack for putting that scale theme to use in vertiginous action sequences that keep them consistently centimeters from death. And each of his survivors has a distinct body language that helps communicate their defining qualities – the mentally fractured #6 (Crispin Glover) moves with dangly abandon, while the childlike twins #3 and #4 dart about like small mammals hunting for morsels – in their case, they feed on knowledge.
Artists have the ability to create something that is both strange and subconsciously familiar, and Acker’s artistry, judging by 9, is one to note. Screenwriter Pamela Pettler (Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride) does not give him a robust enough challenge from the page to draw out his visual imagination to its full potential. It seems he has now had the chance to tell the full story of these remarkable little saviors; if he has other worlds to share with us, I hope to see them. I hope to see him grow from this.