What happened at the end of Polanski's "Ninth Gate"?????

[CanuckAmok]

Frank Langella burns himself up becaise one of the documents was a fake, the angel chick rides Johnny Depp and gets all demonic looking, then she tells him where the real parchment is, and it has her image on it.

The last shot is Depp walking into an unearthly glow emitting from the castle door...

WTF?

What happened??

[La_Serpiente]

1. no clue

i was just as confused as you :shrug:

[toddzilla]

2. what an abomination of a film

if memory serves correctly.. she's the devil and he couldn't resist immortality or whatever the hell it was ..

[killbotfactory]

3. Throughout the movie he was walking through the gates

And that was the final one.

I guess he went to hell or wherever it leads.

[AngryAmish]

4. Who cares?

Polanski is a child-raping jerk.

[CanuckAmok]

6. Well, I care...

...or I wouldn't have posted.

I like closure. I don't care about his personal life.

[toodles_oduff]

5. Well, here's my take.

I think the girl with the long hair was Satan. In fact, a female who resembled her appeared in one of those illustrations from the book. Frank Langella used a bogus ritual and met his fiery end. I think "Angel Chick" liked Johnny from the get-go; for some reason, he was her "chosen one". Perhaps she thought he was good in the sack and cuter than Frank. My interpretation of the end was that by making love with her, he passed some kind of test and thus got to pass through the "ninth gate".:evilgrin:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. loved the movie

Polanski and Depp, are you kidding me - irresistable.

I think he went to Hell with either Satan Herself, or some really mysterious, swank European Satan Escort demon.

[opihimoimoi]

8. ET is the answer, he went with ET up to the Mother ship

which is a classroom for a lab course in the Galatic University

Dysfunctional Planets 101

[Devlzown]

9. I liked that movie a lot,

and I've seen it probably a dozen times. What Balkan was searching for was knowledge. He was a book collector, as was the Baroness. Depp's character had always seen books as commodities rather than treasuries
of wisdom. When he took the job from Balkan he began to realize the
power books can have. The sex scene was, I believe, mostly gratuitous,
although many accounts of satanic rituals involve sexual acts. I don't
think Corso went to Hell, I believe he went to a higher plane of knowledge.

[Blue_Chill]

10. That movie was horrible

If I had the DVD my dog would have a new toy to catch at the park.

[toddzilla]

11. isn't it amazing

that someone can think so little of a film, while others talk it up as one of their favorites? always amazes me.

i thought it was absolutely abysmal. everytime i'm in the video store with my sister, i always suggest it because we endured it together and she'll never forgive me for picking it in the first place.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

12. The Girl is the Devil, the ending is shite.

[supernova]

13. Even Polanski admits the ending sucked

He says this on the DVD commentary, which I don't have yet. Waiting for someone to give me The Ninth Gate for xmas.

I didn't like the movie ending either. It just stopped. I whined to Pert_UK about it one day and he suggested I read The Club Dumas, the book the movie is based on. The ending in the book makes better sense he tells me. I don't know; I haven't reached the end yet. But it is a wonderful book and a good look at rare book collecting.

The Movie: I think the girl (Polanski's wife, btw), is an angel of Satan, not Satan himself. She is a kind of guide. Over the course of the story, Dean (Lucas in the book), demonstrates that he has the ruthlessness and heaped up ambition to go after the Books. At the end, b/c Corso had all the right illustrations printed by Lucifer, he was allowed to open The Gate (to Hell) and communion with Satan.

Having said all that. Dean Corso is hot! :evilgrin:

[chefgirl]

14. Same reaction I had at the end.

I loved this movie all the way through, was totally engrossed, and then...............................
WTF????
I'm generally pretty good at 'letting art just flow over me' and all that. I can get beside a well done attempt at making me surmise for myself, but the ending of this movie just really left me completely befuddled. :shrug:

-chef-