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9 Songs [Blu-ray]
Additional Multi-Format options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
Multi-Format
May 18, 2010 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| — | — |
Format | Multiple Formats, Dolby, AC-3, NTSC, Color, Blu-ray, Widescreen |
Contributor | Margo Stilley, Kieran O'Brien, Michael Winterbottom |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 11 minutes |
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Product Description
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall London s Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night s end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages (familiar to anyone who s ever been in love) unfold in counterpoint to the nine live-concert songs of the story s title.
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : Unrated (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 7.5 x 0.7 x 5.4 inches; 3.2 ounces
- Director : Michael Winterbottom
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Dolby, AC-3, NTSC, Color, Blu-ray, Widescreen
- Run time : 1 hour and 11 minutes
- Release date : May 18, 2010
- Actors : Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley
- Studio : Kino Lorber films
- ASIN : B00368PSNC
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #175,033 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #9,900 in Drama Blu-ray Discs
- Customer Reviews:
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The main character is a British glaciologist through whose eyes, metaphorically, one "remembers" a relationship a lovely, egotistical, careless, charming, and crazy woman, not unlike the young women young men meet from time to time and with whom men try (unsuccessfully) to have a temporally enduring relationship.
Matt (Kieran O'Brien) is an ugly-handsome winsome working-class bloke made good in Tony Blair's New Britain. Lisa (Margot Stilley)is an American, obviously from what is called a "good family", curvaceously slim, statuesque (about two inches taller than Matt), educated, and unserious about both her relationship with Matt and her job. As for her "job", though we don't see much of it at all, it's obviously just a time-marking "playing about with typewriters and latchkeys and calling it work", as EM Forster called the occupations of upper middle class twenty-somethings who receive regular checks from the family back home. She a good-looking 21 year old American woman in London with time on her hands, and a liking for men.
Glaciology is a key thematic element in 9 Songs. Antarctica is a metaphor for one's memory. The snow laid down in the center of the continent becomes ice, trapping bubbles of air inside it. Those bubbles are the continent's "memory" of the weather on a certain day, a certain year. As more and more ice is laid down at the center, the earlier deposits move inecluctably toward the sea, there to be "calved" become bergs, and finally melt, leaving no trace behind.
Apart from Antarctica, there's not a lot more than performances by bands like the Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, and so forth. Nine songs sung in really fun-looking London venues, to be exact, and, of course, the famous scenes of the couple making love. The lovemaking is more inferred than depicted ofttimes, but taken as a whole one would doubt that there is even a square centimetre of the protagonists' anatomies that is not unmistakably displayed in all its glory for all the world to see in this movie. The sex, for the most part, has a quality of warmly relational authenticity that anyone could recognize as very distinct from exploitative porn. As a result, the viewer seldom feels terribly voyeuristic, but rather the director seeks for the viewer to experience a reflective nostalgia, redolent of times past - which is, of course, a function of memory.
HOWEVER, the title of the film does not, I think, refer merely to the "songs" sung by the bands. My own theory is that the auteur, Michael Winterbottom, is alluding to the Chinese 13th century Yuan Dynasty cycle of poems, The Nine Songs, which is in many respects about the Shamanic quest. "Similar to the traditional shaman of Siberia, Central Asia and the Arctic, the wu enters into a trance state in performing ceremonies. However, unlike his northern counterparts, the Chinese shaman enters into a fleeting love relationship with the God (or Goddess)." [taken from Zekeriyah's excellent review of the book of the same name on this site]
You see, this film is not only about memory, and what a guy remembers about a relationship with a woman he has loved (which guys being who they are, is mostly the perceived high points, like going to shows and making love), but 9 Songs also seems to be an extended metaphor for the Shamanic quest, which in the end requires union with the mysterious Beloved other, the mythological dakini, who both enlivens and kills her lover simultaneously and then simply disappears into the sky, and leaves behind (there's that word, memory, again) as her gift a precious, elusive realization of the ugly-beautiful reality of things-as-they-are.
With that in mind, see this movie. It's not really about sex.
Although the acting is very good, what makes the movie come alive and touch the viewer is the camera-work and editing. The flashbacks of the sex scenes are brief, like recollections in real life, and they are interspersed with other memories and music, and the occasional flash to the present, where Matt is working in Antarctica. The music (including a haunting piano solo commissioned for a different film but reused here to great effect) lends a set of additional contrasts which add depth to the movie.
As a note about the music. The nine rock concerts contrast with the Michael Nyman piano pieces, particularly "Debbie" (originally written for Wonderland ). Hint: If you want to get the Nyman music for this film, get this album: Wonderland 1999 Film Score . Nyman's music adds a great deal of tenderness and humanity to what might otherwise be just a steamy set of sex scenes.
If you are not offended by the subject matter or object to seeing actors perform real sex acts on film, I'd recommend suspending your idea of what a movie should be and watching this as it is intended to be watched, as a beautiful portrait of a memory of passion.
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in Canada on July 3, 2021
Keine Ahnung, man tut sich schwer, diesen Film zu beschreiben, zu charakterisieren...….
Habe ihn von Jahrzehnten im TV gesehen, war damals fasziniert, nach Erhalt der DVD wieder angesehen, für mich hat er nichts an seinem Reiz verloren.
Entgegen meinen Vorkritikern halte ich diesen "kleinen" Film für außergewöhnlich, irgendwie "spröde" und doch stimmig, auf seine ganz spezielle Weise trifft er den Lebensnerv dieser Zeit, die Musik, stimmig aber sehr real wird eine Affaire/Beziehung eines Paares mit Altersunterschied gezeigt, ohne eine "rosarote Brille" aufzusetzen oder stilistisch zu überzeichnen.
Ich will jetzt nicht auf die Handlung, oder die expliziten Sexszenen eingehen, wurde schon genügend beschrieben, aber für mich ist es KEIN Pornofilm, sondern der Versuch eines Regisseurs, so eine Geschichte so real wie möglich zu verfilmen, ohne Abstriche machen zu müssen; genau dies finde ich fast einmalig in der Filmgeschichte, eben dieses keine Kompromisse einzugehen, oder Abstriche machen zu wollen.
Michael Winterbottom sagte mal sinngemäß in einem Interview, wo er auch die schonungslosen realen Sexszenen angesprochen, daß es ihn nervt, dass in Filmen der Sex immer stilisiert wird, dadurch in der Darstellung an sexuellen Begehren, Leidenschaft verliert, er einfach Sex so zeigen wollte, wie er ist, einen neuen Weg beschreiten wollte.
Ich würde diesen Film am ehesten, aber am nur Rande, mit "Der letzte Tango in Paris" vergleichen, auch wenn in 9 Songs die Handlung nicht auf rein sexuelle Obsession reduziert wird.
Eben eine Art "Neuinterpretation" dieses Themas.
Ich war beim Sehen von dieser, leider zu seltenen, sehr reduzierten Erzählweise fasziniert, oft ist es nur ein Blick, eine kurze Geste, knappe Sätze und man weiß sofort, wie grade die Stimmung zwischen den beiden ist, bzw. ab dem letzten Drittel, den Zustand ihrer Gefühle, ihrer Beziehung, gerade dies macht für mich den Reiz dieses Films aus.
Obwohl ich nicht mit den Bands "aufgewachsen bin" fand ich die Live-Konzertmitschnitte super, so als eine Art Nebenhandlung ist dieser Film ein musikalisches Zeitdokument.
Ich fand ihn "super", entdeckte M. Winterbottom, den ich bis dato nicht kannte, obwohl dieser frühe Film von ihm sicher nicht perfekt ist, merkt der aufmerksame Zuseher bereits das Talent und die Fähigkeiten dieses Regisseurs.
Sowohl die Länge von etwas über einer Stunde (unbrauchbar für die kommerzielle Verwertung im Kino) als auch die optisch radikale kompromisslose Erzählweise (=Probleme mit der FSK Freigabe) zeigen, dass hier ein Regisseur endlich mal versucht, stilistisch die Trampelpfade des Filmemachens zu verlassen und einen kleinen neuen Weg zu beschreiten.
Ich finde, dies ist gelungen, für mich ist der Film ein kleines, leider viel zu seltenes gelungenes "Juwel", wie man eine Geschichte erzählen kann, weit abseits von Mainstream, ich kenne auch kein formal vergleichbares Werk.
Für alle Cineasten, die sich aufgrund moralischer Werte (=ohne diese kritisieren zu wollen) brüskiert, abgestoßen fühlen, sollte es zumindest der Versuch eines Regisseurs sein, mal einen "andren" Film zu drehen.
Für alle andren Filmfreaks absolut zu empfehlen, man kann ihn gut oder schlecht finden, ein doch gelungener Versuch ist er allemal.
Ein Pornofilm ist 9 Songs sicher nicht !!!!!
Margo Stilley è bellissima bravissima e terribilmente conturbante.
Vi sfido a non guardarlo... in compagnia!Eh eh eh