With the harmonic tone of the violin in the background (composed by Antonio Pinto), we see Amanda as a child, her loving parents, choosing violin from an assortment of toys, playing in the muddy water, painting a picture, celebrating her birthday, performing in a violin concerto, graduating, learning music notes, cycling through the streets, dancing with her friends, and rehearsing for a big concert. He records her as intellectually curious, fearless, and joyful, outgoing personality, and a prodigy while the key moments from her life are shown literally through her eyes. Will is particularly interested in the life of a 28-year-old woman named Amanda Grazzini, a violinist and prodigy, whose life plays out in snippets at the beginning of the film. He tracks the days and takes down detailed notes about their everyday life, their high point and hardships, and records them on VHS tapes which are kept in a room of filing cabinets. “Nine Days” opens with Will (Winston Duke), an arbiter of souls or the gatekeeper of the primordial purgatory, observing the live POV of different individuals he had previously picked to receive the gift of life on multiple television sets stacked on each other in his living room. NINE DAYS SYNOPSIS & SUMMARY: WILL, THE ARBITER OF THE PRIMORDIAL PURGATORY It is also a personal project for Oda as it was also inspired by the suicide of his uncle when he was just 12 years old. One can distinctly discern Oda’s inspiration of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (1998) and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) as well as a passing resemblance to Pixar’s animated film Soul (2020) that also explores the ‘before-life’ or the world of unborn souls.

Related to Nine Days Movie Explained – ON BODY AND SOUL : ‘MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL’ REVIEW This evocative and thought-provoking film is an elaborate metaphor on how souls are selected for the responsibility of life based on their unique characteristics and choices that make them human. The pre-life reality envisioned by Oda is grounded in reality with physical existence and physical environment, in what seems like a parallel dimension, where chosen ones are given life on Earth while the rejected ones are erased from their short-term and provisional existence.

Nine Days is an emotionally-charged and exquisite film set in a single location with its genre conceit dealing with a man tasked with interviewing souls where each soul strives to prove their right to existence.

Walt whitman song of myself nine days