The DVD skipped at the end so I missed about ten minutes but I got the idea I think. I saw the final scene after some messing around with VLC and it spoiled the movie for me. It might have been because I hadn't seen what came before but I can't be sure. I'll allow myself to review it only because I don't have the time to watch something else.
"The Ninth Configuration" is theatrical in the sense that if the actors performed it in my living room it wouldn't lose much in the translation. This brings the artifice to the fore so much that it alienates us from the characters and helps us see them for what they are: symbols for aspects of the psyche. The sane and insane characters blur into each other because the message of the movie, as far as I can tell, is that sane people must sometimes be mad.
I thought it was a good film until it answered its most interesting philosophical question (are all selfless acts done for selfish reasons?) with an emphatic though groundless answer (no). It cheapened all that came before and convinced me that it was an idiot's fruitless intellectual exercise all along.
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