[Christianity Today Movies; June 19, 2009]
Stars: 2
Rated: R
Cast: Geoffrey Rush (Angel), Anthony LaPaglia (Jim Peck), Joel Edgerton (Ron), Ben Mendelsohn (Lenny Peck), Claudia Karvan (Michelle)
A movie is like a parade: before you see the fullness of its pomp and circumstance, you see forerunners, standard bearers, that serve to herald the procession and hint at what is to come. And before you see a movie, you see and hear things that frame your expectations, so you’ll know what about the movie is of primary importance, and why someone should want to see it. The advance banner may well be the plot, but it could also be the cast, especially if the actors have had recent personal troubles. It might be the famous director, or the scale of its special effects. Rarely, the advance banner of a movie bears the name of a writer.
That’s the case with “$9.99”—the signal thing about this movie, the thing that people in-the-know find exciting, is that it is based on the short stories of Etgar Keret. Born in Israel, Keret is the author of short stories and children’s books, and co-author of graphic novels. I haven’t read his work, but it sounds like it original and imaginative, from its very conception. “Missing Kissinger,” for example, packs 50 very short stories into 250 pages. Keret’s stories are frequently surreal, and whimsical and hopeful rather than bitter. His story “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” for example, concerns a man who kills himself and then looks for love in the afterlife. That one was made into the graphic novel “Pizzeria Kamikaze,” and then into the feature film “Wristcutters: A Love Story,” starring Tom Waits and Will Arnett.
From that you can get a feeling for how highly Keret is regarded. The director of “$9.99,” Tatia Rosenthal, says, “Etgar has been referred to as the voice of our generation in Israel, and the pull I felt toward his work was immense.” She praises his “bittersweet, exacting literary voice and its expression of humanism in a morally ambiguous world…the dry-witted expression of a complex reality through everyday situations, and magical realism.” The film found a producer when one of Keret’s fans, Emile Sherman, sought out the writer while on vacation in Tel Aviv. Sherman praises the script: “touching, funny, sophisticated, humanist.”
Do you really need to know all this about the writer behind “$9.99”? I suspect that’s the case. Those who anticipate liking it because it comes from the pen of Etgar Keret will have a deeper appreciation of the film, I think, than those for whom the name evokes a blank “Who he?”
In its general outline, the story is one you’ve seen before; it utilizes the convention of enclosing a wide range of people within a physical place (a stagecoach in “Stagecoach,” an army camp in “The Dirty Dozen,” a theater in “The Muppets Take Manhattan”) to explore various undying themes. A man loses his girlfriend, due to his immature, party-hearty character; another man acquires a girlfriend, one who has unusual tastes; a sweetly naïve young man hasn’t the heart to work for a repossession company; an older man tries to be polite and helpful toward a grumpy intruder who simply moved in. The characters interact for 78 minutes, and at the end most stories are resolved, and most for the better.
That kind of movie can indeed be charming, but it’s not necessarily an advance on the last movie you saw that was built along these lines. In two ways it is sure to be *different* from the last one you saw. In the first place, it uses a fair degree of magical realism. The man who’s lost his love is consoled by a trio of 2-inch-high drinking buddies (he gives them sips of beer from a medicine dropper; they ride in circles on his record turntable). The acquired girlfriend likes her men “smooth,” and after her accommodating lover shaves his head and his body he seeks yet a further way to show his love. The grumpy intruder is an angel of some sort (he has wings), but is otherwise sarcastic and rude.
I’ll agree that such elements are imaginative, but they don’t startle the way they once could have. Americans developed a taste for the absurd when Monty Python became a hit on public television in the 1970s; Woody Allen’s early movies helped too. Whether you’re striving for humor or whimsy, it’s useful to pull out a startling, even impossible, contrast. But the more random the association, the less it can persuasively craft character or depict authentic character change. Elements that are arbitrary may be delightful, even scintillating, but for that very reason they don’t make solid building blocks for a story.
The other really different element is that the film uses clay animation to tell the story. Little figures made of modeling clay were set in place, photographed, moved only a tiny bit, photographed again, until your brain hurts just to think about it. It’s an admirable effort, though of course movement can never be entirely smooth, and subtly shifting facial expressions are more approximate than a human actor could have achieved. Does this add to the movie? Well, it makes it more curious an artifact, and you have to salute the exhausting effort required. But as to whether “$9.99” might have been just as good, or better, filmed the usual way is an open question.
The title is the price of a book acquired by the reluctant repo man; he responded to an ad reading, “Have you ever wondered ‘What’s the meaning of life?’…The answer to this vexing question is now within your reach! You’ll find it in this small yet amazing booklet…yours for a mere $9.99.” Throughout the film Dave attempts to share with other characters the amazing things he is learning—“People think life has only one meaning, but actually there are six!”—but no one wants to listen.
I’ll admit that what intrigued me about the film was a desire to learn what the filmmakers think the meaning of life is. Like the magical realism, like the meticulous clay figures, this turns out to be one more element of a movie that dances and alludes without coming right down to anything, and invites us to believe that dancing and alluding is sufficient in itself. What is the meaning of “$9.99”?You may think there’s only one meaning, but—once you look past the glow of admiration surrounding the writer—it could be less.
Talk About It [3-5 Questions]
1. The angel says that he wanted to see his wife in heaven, but after he killed himself he was turned into an angel instead. Is there still a common misunderstanding that people become angels after death? How would you talk about this with someone who finds the idea comforting?
2. Zack sets his piggy bank free, and it appears we are supposed to find that a sweet conclusion to this strand of the story. But what is likely to happen to that coin-filled piggy bank? Do you think the filmmakers intend us to foresee that subsequent part of the story, or to pretend we don’t?
3. Why does the policeman refuse to accept Mr. Cruller’s confession? What do you make of his statement, “I’m sure that God forgives you”?
The Family Corner: Although this film is animated, it is not for children. A suicide splashes blood over a passerby, twice. Two characters are shown nude and while having sex. “$9.99” has an R rating.