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9 Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence and scary images) Genre: Animated, Fantasy, Science Fiction Theater release: September 09, 2009 by Focus Features Directed by: Shane Acker Cast: Elijah Wood (9), Christopher Plummer (1), John C. Reilly (5), Martin Landau (2), Jennifer Connelly (7), Alan Oppenheimer (The Scientist) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

I first saw Shane Acker's Oscar-nominated short film on which 9 is based at the Telluride Film Festival nearly five years ago. It was intriguing: dark yet captivating, dynamic yet baffling, oddly familiar yet undeniably surreal. The short always felt like part of a much larger whole, so it is no surprise that when visionary director Tim Burton ( Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) saw the film, he, together with Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Nightwatch), encouraged Acker to develop it into a feature-length film.

9 opens just after the end of the world. The dark and frightening landscape is one of rubble and half decomposed human corpses. Mighty war machines lay where they fell, apparatuses out of place even in a world of shattered buildings and apocalyptic desolation. Ravenous fires lick at any available fuel source, and an impenetrable shroud of pollutants and ash cloak the sky. Following an all-out human vs. machine war, neither side came away the victor. Reflecting a dictate of modern atomic theory, mutually assured destruction was imminent, and now the surface of the planet is a blight, wiped clean of any living human presence. A voiceover says, "Humanity had such promise. But we squandered our gifts."

9, voiced by Elijah Wood

A rag doll tumbles off a shelf and somehow comes to life; exactly how this happens, we're left to wonder. The doll, simply known as "9" (voiced by Elijah Wood), is alone in a battered lab. He's made of burlap and sealed by a zipper running the length of his middle. He's no larger than a child's action figure with blinking, apertured eyes—like camera shutters. To the newly alive 9, everything is new, mesmerizing and astonishing. Yet even he senses something is far from normal beyond the disintegrating walls of his birthplace. By chance, 9 finds a small community of others like himself—diminutive, sentient rag dolls—hiding in the sanctuary of a decimated church, and from them learns to evade a series of monstrous mechanical/animal hybrid wraiths intent on ingesting his and his fellow dolls' souls. (To reveal how they got their souls would be a spoiler.)

But when 9 learns that there may yet be hope to save those who have already fallen to the beasts, he convinces the others (including 5, voiced by John C. Reilly, and 7, by Jennifer Connelly) to go against the advice of their leader (1, voiced by Christopher Plummer) to leave well enough alone and go on the offensive against a menace that is growing in strength and size.

Confronted by the Fabrication Machine

9, the movie, contains a compelling subplot centered around the notion of questioning both the universe and authority. 9, the character, is relentlessly inquisitive, asking about his surroundings, his origins, the genesis of the machines, and how they might be destroyed. For a rag doll, 9 asks fundamentally human questions—Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? He can plainly see he is the final model in a line of nine created beings—ostensibly in an attempt to save the human race—each more advanced than the last. By contrast, 1 is old and fearful and wants nothing more than to stay safely hidden away. He wants to keep all those he watches over ignorant of the truth. Naturally he and 9 clash. 1 considers the newcomer to be guided by nothing more than pointless queries. "Questioning," he says, "leads to catastrophe." But catastrophe has already come and gone.

The casting of Elijah Wood is certainly no accident. 9 is steeped in both the imagery and mythology of The Lord of the Rings, a detail made all the more interesting given the fact that director Acker once worked for Weta digital workshop, contributing to the visual effects in The Return of the King. Watching the tiny figures stumble across a blasted landscape toward a towering structure lit by a red, eye-like light source seems to be a reference to the arduous journey made by a pair of persistent hobbits.

It is far from the film's only homage. 9 also invokes The Wizard of Oz, borrowing the familiar refrain of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and twisting it to reflect a new, sickening reality—this is not a place where rosy cheeked little girls wake up from Technicolor dreams; this is a horrific, all-too-real nightmare in which all that made humanity unique and special hangs on, literally, by a thread.

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