An Analysis of the Film The Nines

INTRODUCTION
I recently had the opportunity to see "The Nines", a movie starring Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy. I enjoyed this film; it wasn't your usual Hollywood fare, but wasn't so artsy or high-minded that it alienated the standard movie going crowd. Obviously no film is going to draw a perfect set of reviews, and because of this I noticed that a number of other critics had given the film a low rating. What struck me in general about these other reviews was that the film was invariably described as superfluous, confusing, pretentious, and so forth.

After reading some of these reviews, it struck me that the reviewers were focusing mostly on the plot of the film. Normally this is to be expected, but the "The Nines", I feel, is a film that is best explored through its thematic through-line, rather that what is physically happening on the screen. This is what inspired the analysis that you are reading now. It is my belief that exploring the story of "The Nines" via the plot itself will only serve to confuse the viewer. By stepping outside the confines of the plot structure, we see that there is in fact a very linear story with a beginning, middle and end, hidden within what appears to be an arbitrarily nonlinear story. In other words, the plot is an illusion, and the real meaning can found if you look past it. Fitting, if you take into account the premise on which the film is based.