The Ninth Configuration (1980) 118m
William Peter Blatty directed this film version of his own early novel 'Twinkle Twinkle, "Killer" Kane', although seeing as both the book and the film had been rewritten, revised, and re-edited a number of times, it's a safe bet that even he wasn't sure what to do with his material. As it stands, THE NINTH CONFIGURATION is sprawling and disjointed. Blatty's justification? It's set in a mental asylum. At its worst, it is supposed to be profound; at its best it's amusing. Unfortunately, films set in madhouses routinely trot out trite observations (who is crazier, the people on the inside or the people on the outside?), and CONFIGURATION doesn't go much way to improving that track record. You'd also have to be a pretty green film-goer not to spot the twist revealed midway through the story.
The asylum in this case is a castle deep in a forest in the American Northwest. Hardly therapeutic, as one character is quick to observe, but loonily gothic enough for Blatty's intentions. The patients, we learn, may not really be crazy but just faking it to get their 4F out of the army. Hence we have inmates who bash walls with hammers "to teach the atoms a lesson", audition different breeds for all-dog performances of Shakespeare, think they're superheros, and dress up in outrageous costumes. The film's biggest failing is its theatrical presentation of madness, all wackiness and one-liners - the clause that Blatty has built into the premise (that they may just be pretending to be crazy) doesn't work, firstly because insane people don't act as if they're in Monty Python sketches, and secondly because sane people aren't stupid enough to put on such gonzo routines. There is one genuine case amongst the suspected fakers (a one-time astronaut
played by Scott Wilson) but since his behavior is no different to all the others he just becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the charade. And then there's Stacy Keach as Colonel Kane, the new director of the asylum, who looks like Adam West in BATMAN after a lobotomy and doesn't seem more than a few steps away from becoming a resident himself. Blatty makes play-acting the thrust of the story, as players begin to take on roles within roles. This idea works well enough (in one scene, a character describes Hamlet as acting crazy as means to prevent himself from really going crazy) but the screenplay has religious pretensions that just get in the way. The image of a crucifix on the moon is a pretty cool one, but its value becomes more, not less, without elaboration.
Blatty has some technical flair but is plainly not an actor's director. The
performers seem to follow whichever interpretation they favour - Ed Flanders emotes uncertainly, Neville Brand's critical attitude looks like it's coming more from the actor and not the character, and Keach doesn't appear to have fully recovered from the catatonia he had in END OF THE ROAD ten years earlier. Even Blatty gets in on the act as one of the inmates. I'd still recommend CONFIGURATION in spite of (or probably because of) its flaws because it still has enough unique material, quick-fire dialogue and cinematic qualities to make it interesting. The payoff is an unexpected sequence late in the story that looks like it belongs in a whole other movie - it's also the only part of it that appears dated even for the time it was filmed!
sburridge@hotmail.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 35178 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1170555 X-RT-TitleID: 1015183 X-RT-AuthorID: 1305
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews