Open: 19:30 - 22:30 hrs
Tickets: € 3
THE NINTH CONFIGURATION 1980
Directed by William Peter Blatty
118 minutes
In English
This is certainly a bizarre one. Writer/director William Peter Blatty devised a new cinematic genre which he followed over the course of a decade- the theological thriller. He kick-started it with his novel The Exorcist, furthered his explorations when he created this film, and intended to conclude it with The Exorcist III (Legend). Well, the last of this trilogy was wrestled out of his hands and totally destroyed by the studios, so it's impossible to understand its original intention. But this film, the second part of his trilogy, was still under Blatty's control, and I have to say, it's unlike any other Hollywood film I have ever experienced.
So many movies are bland remakes of previous films, if not in concept, then in style. But when you watch a film like this you can glimpse another possibility... of what cinema might be like if it was more free and original. I won't go into the story line, but I can lay out the premise. After the Vietnam war, many soldiers returned to America pretty fucked up to say the least. This movie is set in a mysterious castle in California, where the most difficult cases of ptsd (post-traumatic stress) are collected and under therapy. In comes a psychiatrist (Stacy Keach) who attempts to deal with the totally surreal situation of this madhouse. What unfolds next is simply unpredictable, dumbfounding, utterly unique.
Some people claim reality is weirder than fiction. Although this movie is set in a Gothic Fortress in America, it obliquely taps into real events happening in Germany after World War II when the CIA set up black sites experimenting with mind control techniques with Nazi scientists. It turns out castles were the perfect locations because they were usually remote, secluded and huge—so the military had free rein to do whatever they wanted. Their aim was to wipe away the memory of their subjects by pumping them full of LSD and other techniques, leaving them psychotic nervous wrecks. One such castle was outside Kransberg near Frankfurt, which is eerily similar to the fortress in this film. These activities were hushed and not reported in the public discourse, but Blatty himself was a Lieutenant in a Psychological Warfare Division of the military from 1951 to 1954 so in many ways this film seems like a warped reflection of his own experiences.
You can't approach this movie in terms of typical Hollywood standards, not in the acting nor its meaning... this is coming from another headspace. One viewer described it as a "hallucinatory mindfuck" and indeed it's littered with bizarre reality break-downs and dream sequences. After the studio saw what Blatty had concocted with this off-the-wall movie, they dumped it and it's rarely been screened. On the other hand, it's been described by some people as "the greatest movie you have never seen."
One recent film critic was flabbergasted and in despair "‘how can I possibly write a critical piece about a filmic masterpiece, or even attempt to do it justice’?. It doesn’t happen that often, but unfortunately for me, William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration is such a film."
CINEMA DÉRIVE/ ventilator
Overtoom 301, 2nd floor
Doors open at 19:30, film starts at 20:00
3 euros