The Ninth Configuration

I rented this film one night when I was tired of seeing the same things in the "New Releases" section, so I (shudder!) headed for the catalog titles, and picked this one out because--God, am I shallow--the cover looked interesting. Turning over to the back, I skimmed the summary, saw that it starred Mike Hammer and the guy who mooned us in the last season of "St. Elsewhere", so I thought that it may be just bad enough to be amusing. So I plunked down my three bucks and went home wondering if I wouldn't have just been better off watching reruns of "Married with Children" all night.

But I watched this movie. Then I rewound it and watched it again. Over the next three days, I watched and rewatched every frame of this masterpiece more times than I should publicly admit. I was moved beyond words, beyond being an audience. I became a disciple--even a proselyte--for this film. Stacy Keach completely astounded me, someone who knew him only as Mike Hammer. People, this man can ACT. I saw every demon his Colonel Kane carried with him. The rest of the cast, with a special metion for Scott Wilson's amazing performance as a tortured astronaut and for Ed Flanders, who kept his character's true motivation well hidden until it could stand to be covered no more, was perfect.

But this movie is, above all, about the writing and the direction. William Peter Blatty cared about his project, and the lucky few (sadly, VERY few) of us who shared in it were fortunate enough to see cinematic perfection virtually attained. Watch this film, let it develop, don't question where its motives are until it decides to let you in on them. Give it your full attention, and you will be rewarded with a treat we so tragically, rarely get to have. No special effects, no huge budget. Just artistry. Pure, refined artistry.

William Peter Blatty will be better known to most as the writer of 'The Exorcist', and here he makes his sterling directorial debut with what is (once the abomination of 'The Exorcist 2' is exorcised) the spiritual sequel to that consummate horror. Having said that, lest the reader get the impression that you're in for more supernatural shenanigans (and pea soup) it should be said that this movie is a million miles away from the horror genre. What's more, 'The Ninth Configuration' is virtually unclassifiable as far as traditional genre categories go and will leave you reeling from the barrage of bizarre images, comedic one-liners, theological debates, and a bar room brawl to end them all!

William Peter Blatty wrote 'The Exorcist' as the first part of a trilogy of novels, the other installments being 'Twinkle twinkle killer Kane' and 'Legion'. 'Twinkle twinkle killer Kane' was adapted to the screen by Blatty as 'The Ninth Configuration' and where 'The Exorcist' explored the argument for the existence of God through the palpable presence of evil, 'The Ninth Configuration' continues the argument through exploring the presence of good in a universe purported by science to be empty, blindly deterministic, and amoral.

At the start of the film we are introduced to a motley band of members of the military who, in the course of the Vietnam War, have all suffered various kinds of mental breakdown and for their treatment have been sent to a reconstructed European castle in some remote American mountains (the film was actually shot in Hungary). Chief among these is the astronaut Capt. Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson) whose illness is seen as somehow key in that it is clearly not feigned due to cowardice as he was never scheduled for combat. This introduction sets the tone for the first part of the film and the portrayal of mental illness is somewhat zany and comedic and continues as we are introduced to the other main character, the psychiatrist Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach). Col. Kane, with the support of fellow psychiatrist Col. Fell (Ed Flanders), then institutes an unorthodox treatment which indulges the fantasies of the inmates in an attempt to invoke a catharsis…which is when all (comedic) hell breaks loose and it is against this anarchic backdrop that Cutshaw argues with Kane for the absurdity of believing in God in a world in which undue suffering proliferates.

The light-hearted whacky tone gives way in the second half as Kane and Cutshaw's arguments become more penetrating (although not completely, as Cutshaw's choice of wardrobe to a Christian Mass will testify!) and the climax of the film is a double-whammy of a plot reveal that casts the performance of Ed Flanders as Col. Fell in a pathos infused light (which can only be fully appreciated with repeat viewings), as well as a bar room fight that will have you stuck to your screen as the tension builds and builds to an explosive finale.

Unfortunately, owing to the fact that a theological tragi-comedy is not the stuff the popcorn and soda crowd really go for, 'The Ninth Configuration' has fallen into the "cult" film category, which is a shame as another film with as fine a plot carried off by as fine a cast (not to mention a wealth of quotable one-liners) you are unlikely to see. However, while the film clearly deserves wider recognition (especially given it's conceptual relationship to 'The Exorcist'), those that seek it out, or fortuitously stumble upon it , are in for a real treat!

I'm always looking for a hidden gem, something I haven't seen before that hasn't been hyped to death on the internet. This film by William Peter Blatty (writer of The Exorcist) might be such a gem. I certainly never heard of it before. I was intrigued by the title and the cover (an astronaut on the moon with Jesus on a crucifix...what on earth could this be about?). This is the plot synopis from IMDb: 'A new commanding officer arrives at a remote castle serving as an insane asylum for crazy and AWOL U.S. Army soldiers where he attempts to rehabilitate them by allowing them to live out their crazy fantasies while combating his own long-suppressed insanity.' Sounds good to me. First of, the dialogue of these insane people is written brilliantly. The actors really go all the way in portraying these nut jobs. It's really funny to watch. But the film is a mix of a lot of different styles. It might start out as a comedy, it also contains horror like elements, drama, surrealistic and tragic parts. It's best not to know to much about this movie beforehand. So just check it out. You might not love it, maybe even hate it but it certainly will be like no other film you've seen before and in these times of cookie cutter productions that is a welcome relief.

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, a drama set in a scenic castle functioning as a mental ward, and asking fundamental questions about life, goodness and evil, was written and directed (and even performed in in a small role) by William Peter Blatty, who became practically a household name in the 70s after the worldwide success of the dramatization of his work, THE EXORCIST (1973). CONFIGURATION is his directorial debut, and reveals him to be a highly talented director; it is really too bad he did not make any other films beside EXORCIST III (1990), for which a director's cut LEGION (2016) was released right around his death.

The spectacular direction, acting and cinematography cannot, in my mind, completely compensate for the implausibility of the plot reveal, which occurs about 2/3 of the way. That implausibility, at least as presented, distracts in turn from the treatment of the serious existential questions the film asks because after the reveal, events to make the movie's point seem contrived to be "just so".

Evidently, the expression "ninth configuration" is supposed to refer to the improbability of proteins randomly rearranging themselves to give rise to life. An astronomically small number is mentioned,and compared unfavorably to the probability for the existence of God, but I must admit that, as a scientist, I had never heard this term before. Nor does it seem to me that anyone could seriously calculate the probability of life arising on earth, given that the sample size of planets where this is known to have occurred is exactly one (there is something called the Drake equation for estimating the number of alien civilizations, which requires estimates for the probability of life in other worlds, but there are too many unknowns to make it possible to perform a serious calculation).

I have found that theological arguments are sometimes dressed up in mystical-sounding mumbo jumbo, and can't escape the suspicion that this might be the case here, too. However, that does not diminish the importance of the question itself of how life could have arisen.

The main philosophical question this films asks, however, is this: if we are really just a collection of atoms, perpetuating a phenomenon involving proteins which originated in an incredibly improbable random event long ago, then whence comes goodness?

The premise behind the question is strongly reductionist: for example, we have at least some biology-based frameworks for understanding altruism in higher organisms, and even if some proteins may play a role in these, the behavior of atoms at that level has long faded into explanatory irrelevance.

The movie is idiosyncratic and plays really well with our expectations. There is a hilarious scene in the beginning involving a short exchange between the protagonist and the man himself, which both foreshadows events to come, and sets us up to question what is real and what is not.

Scene after scene, we are sprayed with rhetorical snippets and actions by the mental patients (and even the attending physician) which seem nonsensical, but then, every once in while, there is follow-up dialogue which makes clear that what we thought was nonsense actually makes perfect sense.

No doubt Blatty did all this to disorient us, the audience. I can only speculate, but I suspect he sought to achieve a state of disorientation in the audience because it is, in a way, the best possible state to be in when asking the most fundamental questions: since we are not certain of anything, we cannot attach ourselves with certainty to any side of the debate.

And not taking sides is nowhere more important than when we try to really get to the bottom of things.

If my speculation is correct, then the set-up is nothing short of a stroke of genius. It makes how the aforementioned plot-reveal was handled all the more disappointing.

My problem is that an impossibly far-fetched set of events is presented to us straight. If, instead, it had taken the movie, say, in a surreal direction, then it would not have cheapened the film's attempts to provide an answer to the main question. As presented, it makes the final sacrifice, and especially the very last scene, seem like plot devices which betray that the author has, after all, taken sides.

Despite this criticism, CONFIGURATION is an impressive debut.

Films with similar elements:

1. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

2. AMARCORD (1975)

3. KING OF HEARTS (1966)

It's rare to find five films that offer as much combined intelligence, passion, visceral excitement, and uncontrolled belly laughs as this. "The Ninth Configuration" is the sort of film people either love or hate. Like many great works of art, it doesn't settle into any middle ground. It's my all-time favorite movie, not perfect but a real screen miracle all the same. This is the sort of movie they don't make any more, because they never really made anything like this. Just this one time. For that, and much else, it is unique.

Scott Wilson plays the despairing Capt. Cutshaw, who believes the universe is a random void based on suffering and cruelty. He is challenged in his atheism by Stacy Keach, a Marine colonel sent to command the institution where Cutshaw and other Army servicemen, many Vietnam War heroes, have been committed to after assorted acts of deviancy. Cutshaw's own madness culminated in his refusal to be launched into space during a final countdown, vividly pictured near the beginning in one of many arresting visuals when the horizon around the launching pad suddenly fills up with the sight of a ferocious, threatening moon, several times bigger than life.

Cutshaw and Keach's Col. Kane duke it out in a serious of probing yet riotous metaphysical dialogues. "I don't belong to the God-Is-Alive-But-Living-In-Argentina club," Cutshaw announces. "But I believe in the Devil alright. And you know why? Because the prick keeps doing commercials!" Kane's counterargument, much weaker at the outset but gaining intensity as Cutshaw's desire to be converted becomes more clear, is that if evil is as powerful and omnipresent as Cutshaw thinks, correctly, than why doesn't he also believe in the real, counterbalancing power of human goodness as something that has its origins beyond humanity?

Meanwhile, the other inmates follow their own neuroses, adapting Shakespeare for dogs and trying to train atoms to allow humans to walk through walls. There's also Neville Brand's Major Groper, a put-upon asylum keeper who finds himself victimized by such pranks as having his name attached to a love letter sent out in a mass mailing addressed to "Occupant." "I got phone call after phone call," he complains, adding bitterly that the female respondents he did contact were "ugly as sin."

People criticize the movie for being filled with such amiable nuttiness, but it relieves the heaviness of the central story and sets the right tone of anarchy and chaos to be sorted out as the picture develops. The third character in this film, after Cutshaw and Kane, is Ed Flanders' Dr. Fell, the medical officer who treats his hangovers with whisky and Alka-Seltzer and observes the lunacy around him with a bemused calm. But he has no small stake in the larger story being worked out between Kane and Cutshaw. In fact, he's more the central figure than anyone, and watching his reactions at key moments is one of the many treats of repeat viewings.

The acting is superb, particularly by the three principals. As we learn in the penetrating director's commentary that accompanies the DVD, the three leads were originally supposed to be Nicol Williamson as Kane, Michael Moriarty as Cutshaw, and Jason Robards as Fell. They would have been good, but not anywhere near as good as the three performances we have. Further proof of God's existence, for anyone who feels the "Ninth Configuration" argument advanced by Kane doesn't hold water, can be found in the fact Wilson and Keach were last-minute replacements in a low-budget film made only to help create a loss-leader for the producers. Unpromising origins to be sure, yet such a brilliant payoff. And how richly perverse: I love the way Kane makes his strongest case for man's goodness while dressed in full Nazi regalia. You don't even notice that the first time you see it, because the power of his words and the questing desperation in his eyes.

I'm dancing around the story itself, because a first-time viewer deserves surprises. Think of C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" with a kick-ass bar fight, and you are in the right ballpark. Add to that the moody set design of an old castle in the Pacific Northwest (but actually shot in Hungary), an unobtrusive but powerful score, and surefire direction by screenwriter William Peter Blatty, who sets every scene as a sort of tableau of Cutshaw and Kane's inner turmoil.

Most of all, the film is amazingly quotable, particularly the canine Shakespeare adapter's (Jason Miller, sublime as Reno) unique take on "Hamlet," which takes the story in a whole new direction while offering a brilliant analysis of Shakespeare's great play. Even the little lines resonate with rare power. "Every kind thought is the hope of the world," Fell says at one point. Humble but true, as this film is proof.

You may not be converted into a belief in the divine, and the end does push things a bit harder than many would like (though with a blind courage rarely seen in film), but "The Ninth Configuration" will make you think a little more about the questions of our existence. And you will laugh a lot on the journey. Like I said, they don't make films like this anymore because they never did. This is a one-of-a-kind experience worth seeing.