The Ninth ConfigurationIn Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", after Alice remarks that she does not wish to be in the company of the mad, the Cheshire Cat comments: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." This same sentiment resonates throughout William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration. Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach) is assigned as the new psychologist to a group of soldiers who appear to have been stricken with a kind of psychosis, including the erstwhile astronaut, Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson). In his efforts to bring these men back to reality, he must confront his own mind, and ask himself if he is really no different, if he too is crazy.
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The Ninth Configuration is and isn't a war movie; all of the men in the strange treatment camp established in a foreboding, gothic castle in the Pacific Northwest are men with ranks in the military, and many of them presumably acquired their unique forms of madness as a result of that vocation. However, the war that still rages within each of these men is something more existential, ranging from an understanding of physics, art, or even religion. The madness which gnaws at their souls is one which comes from unanswered questions. This is especially true of Cutshaw, who for all his ravings and quick retorts when Kane attempts to reach him, is deep down a lonely man, convinced that God does not exist. The Ninth Configuration is sometimes regarded as the spiritual successor to The Exorcist, which was adapted from another novel by Blatty, and for which he wrote the screenplay. The Ninth Configuration does not, however, showcase any overt supernatural elements, but contemplates the existence of them all the same, and how these forces that exist as higher concepts, beyond mankind, hold dominion over us, in body or in soul. The castle's inmates exhibit a kind of pantomime of military structure, intentionally subverted to appear absurd. That structure also outlines their individual psychoses; squint, and you can see the men they were before their minds cracked under the weight of loftier themes. Kane's colleague at the castle, Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders), comments that virtually all of the men under observation possess higher than average intelligence, some of them actual geniuses. The implication is that this defining characteristic of mankind--a capacity for abstract thought and quest for knowledge--is ironically the very undoing of the species...where the mind flourishes, the soul suffers. Furthermore, the suggestion that ignorance is a shield against the weight of oppressive knowledge is exemplified in Kane, who represses memories of his own. His own internal struggle makes it easier for him to sympathize with the inmates, and he has better success reaching them than his predecessors as a result.
The Ninth Configuration has a surreal, dream-like quality to it, as though the predominant insanity were affecting us through the perceptions of our protagonist, Kane. The very setting of the film is intentionally unlikely, meant to unnerve the audience--an ominous, rainy castle in the mountains, perpetually under a state of fog. Other images--some of which directly from a dream--speak to the terror of the unknown and how insignificant in the face of it we all are. An early scene showing a space shuttle preparing to launch is interrupted by a moon of staggering size cresting the horizon, and another where Kane recalls a dream he attributed to his late brother Vincent--who was a notoriously ruthless soldier in Vietnam--is of an astronaut encountering a crucified Jesus Christ on the moon. The castle is itself like a mad inmate, filled with an eerie collection of religious statues looming over the denizens, ponderously high ceilings dwarfing the residents, an--ironically (and anachronistically)--a centrally placed poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, as if right at home in his Transylvanian castle. When Kane comments about the unusual setting for treating the mentally unstable, he's right on the money. In some ways, Kane's trip into this mysterious place is similar to that of Alice in Lewis Carroll's own story about a girl who visits a dimension where her concept of logic and the rules of civilization are upended. And as it is in the story of Alice, Kane's encounters with the inmates are generally filled with sharp dialogue and punchy lines that are memorable for their black comedy and absurdity both. But even these utterances by presumably mad minds possess a kind of backwards logic to them, as though they were a riddle or a puzzle, a knot for Kane to untangle. Kane meets a variety of interesting characters, who each believe they have figured out the secret to some deeper meaning. One patient is convinced he is Superman, and another puts on a routine of Al Jolson in blackface. Lieutenant Frankie Reno (Jason Miller) is teaching assorted dogs to become Shakespearean actors, including his "star", a dog named "Sir Lawrence". At one point, Reno poses the eternal question to Kane: is Hamlet crazy, or is he faking it? The very question--and Reno's answer--befits the situation at the castle, and even affords Kane a method to treating the occupants, to helping them resolve their internal angst and their understanding of their place in the world.
Recommended for: Fans of a surprisingly contemplative black comedy and drama about the kind of madness that grips a mind when confronted with powerful, existential terror, like the existence of God, good and evil, and how one struggles to find order in the chaos.
The Ninth Configuration has a surreal, dream-like quality to it, as though the predominant insanity were affecting us through the perceptions of our protagonist, Kane. The very setting of the film is intentionally unlikely, meant to unnerve the audience--an ominous, rainy castle in the mountains, perpetually under a state of fog. Other images--some of which directly from a dream--speak to the terror of the unknown and how insignificant in the face of it we all are. An early scene showing a space shuttle preparing to launch is interrupted by a moon of staggering size cresting the horizon, and another where Kane recalls a dream he attributed to his late brother Vincent--who was a notoriously ruthless soldier in Vietnam--is of an astronaut encountering a crucified Jesus Christ on the moon. The castle is itself like a mad inmate, filled with an eerie collection of religious statues looming over the denizens, ponderously high ceilings dwarfing the residents, an--ironically (and anachronistically)--a centrally placed poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, as if right at home in his Transylvanian castle. When Kane comments about the unusual setting for treating the mentally unstable, he's right on the money. In some ways, Kane's trip into this mysterious place is similar to that of Alice in Lewis Carroll's own story about a girl who visits a dimension where her concept of logic and the rules of civilization are upended. And as it is in the story of Alice, Kane's encounters with the inmates are generally filled with sharp dialogue and punchy lines that are memorable for their black comedy and absurdity both. But even these utterances by presumably mad minds possess a kind of backwards logic to them, as though they were a riddle or a puzzle, a knot for Kane to untangle. Kane meets a variety of interesting characters, who each believe they have figured out the secret to some deeper meaning. One patient is convinced he is Superman, and another puts on a routine of Al Jolson in blackface. Lieutenant Frankie Reno (Jason Miller) is teaching assorted dogs to become Shakespearean actors, including his "star", a dog named "Sir Lawrence". At one point, Reno poses the eternal question to Kane: is Hamlet crazy, or is he faking it? The very question--and Reno's answer--befits the situation at the castle, and even affords Kane a method to treating the occupants, to helping them resolve their internal angst and their understanding of their place in the world.
Recommended for: Fans of a surprisingly contemplative black comedy and drama about the kind of madness that grips a mind when confronted with powerful, existential terror, like the existence of God, good and evil, and how one struggles to find order in the chaos.