Released in the last year of the twentieth century, The Ninth Gate is a film about the use of a book to conjure up Satan. The book's title is The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. Between three copies exist nine engravings appropriated from a book written by Lucifer. The person who gets all of those engravings can conjure up the devil. The Kingdom of Shadows presumably refers to Satan's kingdom. At the end of the film, Dean Corvo, a dishonest book dealer, rather than his client, Boris Balkan, is welcomed into a castle in which Satan is located. As the castle's main doors open, a blinding light shines outward into the night. Although Thomas Hobbes castigates the Roman Catholic Church as the kingdom of darkness in his text, Leviathan, Satan's realm has typically been depicted as dark in Christian art. Indeed, the film's own reference to Lucifer's kingdom as that of shadows follows this motif. Yet how can we account for the white light inside the castle?
Some commentators of the film have suggested that the light casts shadows in our earthly realm, but this does not answer why Satan is surrounded by light, especially as the devil is associated with lies, which do not thrive in the translucent disinfectant of light. Furthermore, Leibniz's notion of God as perfect being implies that the darkness of nonexistence is furthest from God. In the Gospel of John (1:4) is written, "In Him was life, and the life is the light of men." Furthermore, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome" (1:5). Finally, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world (8:12). Seeing Dean Corvo enveloped in bright light as he enters the castle in which Satan has been conjured up does not make sense; the devil is not the light.
Some commentators of the film have argued that the light represents Dean Corvo's enlightenment. After all, he is the one who gets to see Satan. This raises the question of whether knowledge of evil can constitute enlightenment. The Gnostic Gospels refer to Christ as enlightening. From The Gospel of Truth (18:12-14) is written, "Through the hidden mystery Jesus Christ enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and show the way, and that way is the truth he taught them." Being enlightened thus brings a person out of darkness. Truth and darkness are mutually exclusive. So even though Dean Corso comes to know more about Satan, this cannot mean that he is enlightened. We are here at the point of a paradox in which Corso comes to know more about ignorance (of truth). To be sure, seeing a supranatural religious entity would be stunning; such a person would know that such entities really do exist even if the entity seen is the master perpetrator of lies, ignorance, and forgetfulness of God.
Perhaps the blinding light illustrates just how qualitatively different the supranatural religious realm is from our own. It could even be that when the two realms come in contact, a clash-point exists such that high intensity energy is released in the form of light. The bright light may be indicative of such an interface, and thus point to the qualitative difference between the realms of the religious supranatural and our own natural world. In the film, Dean Corso wins the contest in being able to see the devil. What he has access to (i.e., the supranatural) is distinct and rare in even the film's story world.
Going outside that world, to the authorial intent, Roman Polanski says in his commentary to the film (on the dvd) that he was making fun of the supernatural in films, such as in leaving it unclear to the viewer whether "Green Eyes" has supernatural powers such as flight. Polanski's ironically "dark humor" includes Boris Balkan's expressionistic facial expression while he strangles Liana Telfer in the film. Not every viewer catches that kind of humor, Polanski admits. His choice of piercingly bright light as the door to the devil opens could thus be a deliberate use of a motif that is generally related to God rather than the devil. If so, my musings about on why light rather than darkness could be associated with the devil are for naught; they are eclipsed, or overridden.
Similarly in the case of the Bible, authorial intent can eclipse the story world. For instance, the latter may portray some features as historical facts. If the authorial intent is to make religious points rather than provide a historical record, the veracity of the "facts" in the story world should be subordinated to religious appropriation (and misappropriation) of said empirical facts. If two Gospels differ, for example, on when, relative to Passover, the Last Supper takes place, the supposedly historical disagreement is really, given authorial intent, the authors making different theological points. In short, the depiction of events as historical happenings serves theological points so such depictions can legitimately be fabricated. This is not to say that a theological point cannot make use of historical events, but even here, an independent historical account is necessary to verify that the events really did occur as depicted.
