The Ninth Gate

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. 

Rosemary’s Baby

The film narrative centers on Satan impregnating Rosemary, a married woman in New York City. According to Roman Polanski, the film’s director, the decisive point is actually that neither Rosemary in the film nor the film’s viewers can know whether it was the devil who impregnated her. Beyond the more matter of being able to distinguish a psychosis from a more “objective” or external religious event, the importance of the supernatural to religion is also, albeit subtly, in play, according to Polanski.

“Nothing supernatural is in the film,” Polanski says in an interview that comes with the DVD, so the intrusion of religion into Rosemary’s pregnancy could all be in Rosemary’s head. Given the paranoia “over the safety of her unborn child [that] begins to control her life,” Rosemary may unjustifiably fear that the Satanic couple in the next apartment hosts a coven that plans on sacrifice her baby; Rosemary may hallucinate the devil’s face during the sex scene and the devil’s likeness in her baby after his birth. As for the first hallucination, however, Rosemary does not eat much of the drugged chocolate dessert furnished by Minnie Castevet from next door. Whereas the sequence through the boat scene looks hallucinatory, the fact that Roman Castevet’s painting red lines on Rosemary’s naked chest and abs as she lies on a bed is in the same scene as the sex, which crucially includes a camera shot of part of the devil’s body—a shot not from Rosemary’s point of view—followed by a very brief shot of the devil’s face from Rosemary’s point of view, the supernatural presence of the devil is indeed in the film. A dream or hallucinatory sequence in life as in a film does not maintain a “scene” for long, yet the one of the painting and intercourse is sustained long enough not to be dreamlike. So I cannot agree with Polanski’s claim that nothing supernatural is in the film. He later admitted to being an agnostic, yet he did not keep to his personal beliefs in the making of the film—which is a good thing.

Only one very brief look at the devil having intercourse and another such glimpse of the baby’s face struck me most in my first viewing of the film. Genius! I thought, as the viewers would only get a glimpse of the central character—and one that is distinctively religious. By showing us less, in other words, Polanski actually raised the significance of the supernatural to religion. This raises the question of whether the supernatural really is so important in the phenomenology of religion. Perhaps supernatural additives have been placed in religions to gain adherents. In Christianity, perhaps it is easier for people to focus on an image of the resurrected Jesus than the invisible Kingdom of God, even though Jesus in the Gospels claims he came to preach the mysteries (i.e., what is hidden) of his Father’s Kingdom. It is easier to call the prince of peace the king in that Kingdom, with not much attention going either to the invisible Father or the Kingdom. In his book, The History of Natural Religion, David Hume argues that the human brain has an innate tendency to posit human characteristics on inanimate objects (and animals). As we do so in a given religion, it becomes overladen, human all too human, such that the original divine simplicity is covered. The human mind has trouble holding onto such divine purity as Plotinus’s the One; it is much easier for us to envision the supernatural. That which catches our eyes is irresistible even to an agnostic director, as well as to the viewers. We crave even just a glimpse of Satan in the film, and the provision of just a glimpse actually validates how important the supernatural is not only in the film, but, moreover, in religion itself. But is the supernatural in religion itself, or do we humans bring the supernatural images to religion?