Nine Days * * * ½

Will: And what makes you think you're suitable for the position?

I don't know if it's the times we live in, but this film is receiving an extraordinary amount of praise.  Perhaps, after nearly two years of Covid19 we are hungry for a life affirming message.  

The story itself is dystopian, other worldly, or whatever you want to call it.  

A man called Will lives in a small house in a wilderness.  He sits around all day watching nine TV screens. Each of the crude CRT screens that Will is viewing is the eyes of a person on earth - what they are seeing he is seeing. Will also has heaps of battered old filing cabinets in which he keeps the notes of each person he is watching.  Not far from his house is a junkyard which he occasionally visits to salvage bits and pieces.  Will also has a cheeky friend and advisor called Kyo. 

When one of the people Will is watching dies he has to interview several "souls" to replace the dead person. They come to Will's house.  

The souls look and act like normal humans might at a job interview.  Nervous, twitchy, keen to impress. If they fail the interview they won't get to replace the soul on earth and inhabit a body. Then they will go back to being souls without identity.  They are all desperately keen to get the position. Will has to choose, but as he dearly loved the person that died on earth, he doesn't seem to think any of them are truly worthy.

Kyo introduces some informal applicants, much to Will's disapproval, especially as they have the temerity to challenge Will. One in particular is to become a key figure and compel Will to reconsider his values.

For a period of nine days, the applicants also have to watch the TV Screens and take notes,  to give them some idea of what it's like to be inside a human body on earth.  Each of them are struck by something very beautiful which they have seen on earth.  

For those that fail the selection process Will finds it hard to send them back into the ether without at least having a taste of what life is like, so he lets them choose an earthly experience and attempts to recreate it for them, be it a day on the beach or a ride on a bicycle on a summers day. 

When I saw it I was underwhelmed, but the more I think about it the more I am impressed by this parabolic film.   Even though, in the end the most potent message is left to the great American poet Walt Whitman with a narration of his overwhelming beautiful poem Song Of Myself.  

Which makes me wonder, is that what people are getting off on?  Especially as it is in the closing section, and that's what it leaves you with and invites you to take home.