Review No.66: The Nine Muses

Now the explosions of This Means War have died down it's to calm down with a gentle arthouse curio entitled The Nine Muses. The piece is more art installation than film and is director John Akomfrah's history lesson on the movement of immigrants from their native lands to Britain in the 1950s. Each mini-segment starts with one of the names of the nine Greek muses before using old newsreel and narration of classic literary works to fit both within the theme of that muse as well as within the story of these immigrants. There are readings here from works by Beckett, Shakespeare, Dante and Joyce plus as you would expect a lot of Greek mythology thrown in for good measure with classic narration provided from familiar voices. The old newsreel footage and jazz music is interspersed with plenty of shots of the director, who himself travelled from his native Ghana to the U.K., walking around snow-bound Alaska in a fetching yellow mackintosh.

On the back of the DVD as well as on its imdb description blurb, The Nine Muses is said to be an experimental film and it is just that. It does seem that Akomfrah is trying to experiment with what he can get away with in the confines of film-making with some of the vintage clips really not making sense in terms of the film. On the plus side he's done a good job putting everything together there are some interesting interviews conducted with the racist white Brits not wanting the immigrants in their country and the musical choices are inspired. The shots of the director in Alaska are also beautifully done but again I never really felt they gelled in terms of what he was trying to do here. I feel the main problem was that his point about never feeling welcome in this country was hammered home in every section here and at times the film just left me cold and that includes the bits not shot in Alaska. I do applaud Akomfrah for trying to use the filmic medium to do something a little out of the ordinary I just don't feel he was ultimately successful.

Verdict: The Nine Muses is almost too arthouse for its own good while visually it was often stunning, narratively it became stale too quickly so I'll have to only award it 5.5/10