Basic Instinct
Eightish Michael Douglas plays a troubled and deeply stupid homicide detective investigating an ice pick murder. Chief suspect is chilly, rich novelist Sharon Stone, a Three.

Stone is hard, manipulative and an actress in her own life. The character is similar to Kathleen Turner's below. Both are intimate subtypes, playing roles of desirable women (see "Finer Distinction Notes"). Though she's portrayed as aggressively seductive, sexuality is not what drives Stone's duplicity and game-playing. Rather, she has a heart that she's trying not to feel, and she spins illusions to control her emotions and environment. This emotional-management-through-scenario is reflected in the way she arranges life to imitate the story lines of her novels.

It helps to know that she's a Three because the story is both misogynistic and homophobic. Basic Instinct freely panders to the chuckleheaded notion that Stone's character might be driven to murder because she's a lesbian man-hater. This is the kind of movie where a woman who preaches sexual independence from men would just naturally turn out to be a serial killer.

Overall, the film is glossy, lurid and rather peculiar. It was a big hit, so go figure. The mystery is no great shakes either, but Stone is better than the movie and instructive as a Three. In an accidental way, Basic Instinct is about men's fears of women. Stone's deceitful, alluring character matches the archetype of the Siren. Female Threes who are intimate subtypes often have this specific function in movies - to lie to men and lure them to their doom.
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Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont
These two films offer a fascinating contrast for our purposes. They tell different versions of the same story and were released within a year of one another. The story line - about deceit and vanity - is strongly driven by the main character's Threeness. The two actors - John Malkovich and Colin Firth - play Valmont quite differently but both nicely capture the style. Most of the other major characters are the same in both films, so this makes an interesting double bill. If you haven't seen either one, start with Valmont and then compare its characters with those in the more entertaining Dangerous Liaisons.

The story is about sexual gamesmanship among aristocrats in 18th century France. The main character Valmont (Malkovich, Firth) enters a competitive wager with an ex-lover (Glenn Close, Annette Bening). She challenges Valmont to deflower the virginal daughter of a friend because the daughter (Uma Thurman, Fairuza Balk, both Niney) is to marry Close/Bening's current lover. Her motive is revenge against the lover (who thinks he is marrying a virgin). She further challenges Valmont to seduce the virtuous wife of a minister (Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Tilly, both playing Nines), a pious woman who is by reputation incorruptible.

Three Valmont sneeringly takes the challenge, the reward being the sexual favors of Close/Bening, whom he secretly loves. The scheme is set in motion but over the course of the story, everyone involved is tragically undone. Cunning Valmont's surprise flaw is that he has a heart, a fact he discovers when he falls in love with the woman he has set out to ruin.

John Malkovich invests his role with charisma and panache, and plays Valmont as an intimate subtype. He has lust for the game and arrogantly revels in his skills as a sexual imposter.

Firth lacks Malkovich's venom and tang. He plays Valmont as a social subtype, someone who thinks his status will improve if he wins the game. He seems more juvenile and accepts the challenge as though it were some larkish prank. With Malkovich there is the feeling that his whole personality is riding on his ability to win the wager. His subsequent undoing is all the more poignant for this reason.

The other interesting contrast is between the Glenn Close and Annette Bening roles. Both have identical functions within the story, but they have different Enneagram styles and different motivations for initiating the wager. Close is an Eight and her drive is to be strong and prevail over a world of men. She tells Malkovich: "I've always known that I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own. In the end, I distill everything to one simple precept - win or die." She wants to win, as a Three would, but in a way that makes her strong. Elsewhere she mentions her determination to "never again be ordered around."

Bening's Three wants to win, but more to recover from a wounding of her vanity. Her desire for revenge is not specifically in the service of having a strong self so much as to maintain a narcissistic self-image. She's attached to her persona and her motive for ruining her ex-lover almost seems like revenge for his cracking her mask ("No one has ever left me before"). She's relentlessly false and duplicitous in all of her relationships. She has a 2 wing and is chameleon-like with each person she manipulates.

Stephen Frears, who directed Dangerous Liaisons, went on to make The Grifters, which is about Three con-artists who come to tragic ends. Then Frears made the movie Hero, about an imposter who has qualms about the role he plays.
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Malkovich plays a decidedly similar Three in In The Line Of Fire, although the story couldn't be more different from Dangerous Liaisons. In Fire he's a sociopathic assassin trying to outwit Eight Secret Service man Clint Eastwood. He's crazier and not an intimate subtype, but otherwise displays the same world view. Malkovich is very good and Eastwood gives an endearing performance in a crisp, exciting thriller.
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Downhill Racer
Early Robert Redford movie about a competitive cad, a Three who wants to qualify for the U.S. Olympic ski team in the worst way. Everything has been subsumed by his athletic goals and the film coolly shows the cost. He's hard, hollow and emotionally inarticulate.

Best moment comes when Redford goes home to Colorado and is asked by his farmer father why he even wants to qualify for the team. Redford looks uncomfortably bewildered and blurts, "If I win I'll be a champion!" Father thinks for a moment and says dryly, "World's full of 'em."

The father is stingy, disapproving, and Oneish. He won't give his son a chance. It's not unusual for a Three to have an emotionally distant parent for whom the child performs. The achievements are an attempt to leap over the distance and get the parent's recognition.

In the end the skier wins but, of course, really loses. Camilla Sparv plays a glamorous, empty woman whom Redford takes up with, and she's pretty much a Seven.

Good documentary style film with exciting ski sequences.
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IMPOSTER MOVIES
There are many films about imposters and they often involve Threes. Most of the story lines have similar tensions to Dangerous Liaisons. The main character falsely sells him or herself and then is undone, either by falling in love or because the impersonation backfires in some way. Sometimes the Three gets in touch with some genuine feelings, sometimes they get punished, sometimes they happily get away with the scam. The following short reviews start with sympathetic and comic imposters and then progress to the more villainous variety.

Bed And Breakfast features Roger Moore (the former James Bond) as a man on the run from a powerful gangster Moore has scammed. He hides out at a small-town bed and breakfast owned by Talia Shire (One, 2 wing). Sparks fly initially between them because Shire is Oneishly fighting her attraction to Moore, and besides, she knows he's up to something and ethically disapproves.

Moore asks her: "Have you ever told a lie?"

"No! Why would I?" she asks.

"For convenience, for profit, for fun!"

"Lying isn't fun!"

"Then you've not been telling the right lies."

He eventually confesses to his career as a con-man ("I've never been an honest man"), but it's clear that his developing affections for everyone in the household are genuine. He's truthful within his façade, a charmer yet well-meaning.

This is a slender film but it's kind of enjoyable, almost wholesome. Moore's no Spencer Tracy, but he's not bad here in a modest role as a nice Three. Colleen Dewhurst is Shire's mother, something of a Seven with an 8 wing.
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Sommersby stars Richard Gere as the maybe/maybe not husband of Jodie Foster who returns home just after the American Civil War. It's been such a long time that nobody remembers Sommersby too well and Gere seems to know everyone. Gradually cracks appear in his sheen and it's clear that he's playing some sort of role. He's watched over and disapproved of by another One, fundamentalist Christian Bill Pullman.

Gere eventually goes on trial for crimes committed by Sommersby but the denouement has several interesting twists. Role-playing turns out to be his attempt at redemption and living truthfully. Gere's motivations are ironic and yet just right for a Three. He's also good-hearted, if confused, and has a 2 wing.
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Australian actor Bryan Brown plays the title role in Sweet Talker. We know from the start that he's a con-man. We watch him leave prison and settle into a small beach resort. There he hatches a scheme to convince the locals that a sunken galleon resides nearby. He works the scam from various angles, takes money from investors, and predictably gets involved with a Niney woman (Karen Allen) and her young son. He is eventually unmasked, Allen gets Oneish and Brown is torn between his scam and people he has come to care for.

Film is a little flat, but has its moments. Brown is transparently calculating rather than charismatic, a bit like Colin Firth in Valmont.
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For a more criminal but still sympathetic Three, there's Jamie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda. This rollicking, expert comedy casts Curtis as a likable con-woman in cahoots with manic Seven Kevin Kline. They are partners in a London robbery that lands their English accomplice in jail. Since the jailed partner knows where the diamonds are, Curtis spends most of the story scheming and seducing her way to the loot's location. Her motives are simple; she wants the jewels and she's cheerfully shameless about what she'll do to get them.

Part of her strategy is to feign interest in the accomplice's lawyer, John Cleese, a melancholy, dutiful Nine (1 wing). Depressed about his dead-end career and marriage to a shrewish One, Cleese responds vulnerably to Curtis's overtures. He's so smitten with her that we worry that she will devastate him. Turns out Curtis grows truly fond of him and her authentic feeling almost steers her off her goal. It also becomes clear that Cleese as a Nine has his own connection to 3. He sees through Curtis but likes her anyway. A little bit of larceny actually suits him and becomes his ticket out of the misery of being good.

Kline is wildly funny as an inflating narcissist whose high opinions of himself are based on less than nothing. Michael Palin is another accomplice, a self-defeating, tormented Six.

John Cleese, who wrote the screenplay, said he thought it was about the difference between the Americans and the English. As a European, his image of Americans is Threeish, and Three is the Enneagram style that we as a culture most often prize. In any case, Wanda is obnoxious fun; comedies of any kind are rarely this good.
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There's also an offbeat suspense comedy with similar tensions to Wanda called Framed. Jeff Goldblum is a Niney American artist enlisted in a scam by English con-woman Three, Kristin Scott-Thomas. She's also after cash but likable anyway.
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A clever, unusual comedy returns us to (pre) Civil War times. Skin Game is something of a sleeper; it first seems breezily trivial but turns out to have a sharp anti-racist edge. James Garner and Lou Gossett star as con-men partners who work a scam where Garner sells Gossett as a slave and then later breaks him free. They have a jaunty, profitable time at this until the day the scheme backfires and Gossett actually does wind up enslaved. Garner teams up with con-woman Susan Clark and together they track down his lost partner. Gossett's from a rich family, is well-educated and has no reference for the bitter conditions he endures. His loyalties get more and more complex as he learns that what he's been playing at is no game.

Twin souls Garner and Clark are both Threes. They make a pragmatic scheming couple who enjoy each other's role playing. Clark is very similar to Jamie Lee Curtis in Wanda.

Garner and Gossett bicker and clash, but fondly. Gossett's pretty much a Six and has more integrity than Garner. He's also better at predicting what will go wrong. Garner is unchanged in the end but still quite genial. Story is witty, well acted and deceptively perceptive.

White Men Can't Jump faintly resembles Skin Game. It tells a tale of two basketball hustlers joining forces to win inner city games. The scam depends on opponents underestimating dim-looking white guy (Woody Harrelson) as he teams up with black sharp-shooter Wesley Snipes. Snipes is the Three and while he's ultra-competitive and a bit shifty, underneath his goals and loyalties are clear. He wants to take his family up and out of their poor urban neighborhood. To do this he works several jobs and will even hustle his partner if he has to. Snipes has a certain personal decency and grows to be a protective if unsentimental friend to the troubled Harrelson.

Latter is a Nine with an 8 wing. The contradiction between Nine and Eight is evident in how Harrelson first wins and then loses at whatever he does. He's focused enough to win games (connection to 3), but angrily hooked on proving himself. His girlfriend, Rosie Perez, a goal-oriented probable Three, demands that he commit wholeheartedly to their relationship. Sustained focus is precisely what Harrelson can't manage and his attempts to understand his failures are dogged by a Niney inability to see the obvious.

I was prepared to dislike this film, but found it disarming, raucous and full of energy. The endless ball-court hype and palaver is funny and the performances are all very good.
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Now for the baddies:
The One/Three clash mentioned earlier is quite visible in a movie called The Beguiled. Geraldine Page and Clint Eastwood star in - of all things - a gothic feminist revenge fantasy. Eastwood plays a wounded Civil War deserter posing as a pacifist Quaker who finds refuge in an orphanage for young girls. Once inside, he sets about seducing one woman after another, changing his stories and manufacturing sentiments as he goes. Elizabeth Hartman plays a naïve Six whom Eastwood preys upon.

Page is the headmistress, an orderly, moral One. She's an intimate subtype and prone to jealousy, which is bad news for Clint. The women eventually compare notes, get angry and exact a rather gruesome revenge. As they do, we see the opportunistic hardness that motivated Eastwood all along. This film is another sleeper; both unusual and atmospheric.
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Steamy, well-made film noir Body Heat has Three Kathleen Turner married to Three tycoon Richard Crenna. She initiates an affair with bored, small-town lawyer William Hurt, a Nine.

A self-acknowledged weakling, Hurt allows himself to be drawn into a plot to kill Turner's husband ("You're not too smart. I like that in a man"). She is alternately seductive and pleading by turns, matching his images of her and creating new ones of herself. She lures him with the promise to be together once the rich husband is dead, but Hurt finds multiple levels of deceit as the story unfolds. Behind it all Turner's heart is diamond-hard and her true motives are revealed in the denouement. She has a 2 wing and is another intimate subtype Siren.
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House Of Games - David Mamet wrote and directed this story of a repressed, successful Nine lady psychiatrist drawn into an elaborate scam by Three con-man Joe Mantegna. The whole film is about deception and the illicit fascination the psychiatrist (Lindsay Crouse) has for Mantegna's sleight of mind. The psychiatrist is a self-muffled good girl who is excited by the social audacity of the con-man's lies and many false faces. As a Nine, she's connected to 3, in this case to the deceptive low side.

She's also a little dim, slow to catch on to how many ways she herself is being scammed. In the end, the Mantegna character's true motivations emerge, and they're none too pleasant. We see the venal, unapologetic hostility that drove all the games. Throughout the film, he is both charismatic and hollow, charming and calculated. His confederates all display the same attitudes, and several seem like Threes as well.

The film is engrossing though it feels truncated, like a two act play. Lindsay Crouse as the psychiatrist is deliberately stilted, like a Nine walking in her sleep. Lilia Skala is on hand as Crouse's supervisor and she's something of a nice Two.
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If House Of Games portrays a netherworld, Glengarry Glen Ross is like a visit to one of Dante's levels of Hell, the one where everybody lies. Based on another David Mamet play, this film is an exhilaratingly good portrait of a group of sleazy salesmen working for a shady real estate company.

Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon both play Threes, the former successful while the latter is kicking and flailing down a greased slide to oblivion. They're Outcome Monsters; they'll say or do anythingg is an attem to make a sale. Work requires a constant impersonation, but it's a way of life for these men.

Pacino's style is smoother. As we watch him close a deal, he's like some silky prince of darkness enfolding his victim in his robes. He's elegantly groomed and laser-fast at switching masks and tactics. Lemmon's character is more desperate and obsequious, sort of a parody of himself. Yet when he makes a big sale he turns gloating and abusive, preaching bankrupt salesman philosophy and one-upping the company's quiet office manager (Kevin Spacey). Despite his mean streak, we feel Lemmon's growing desperation; he's a crumbling phony who's probably lost the dubious skill he once had. The main office has pressured the salesmen and their jobs are at risk if they don't make more sales. They react like sewer rats; they eat family. Some fail, some succeed, but Lemmon's decline is inevitable.

This film is terrific in a tense-stomached sort of way. There's great individual and ensemble acting as the cast handles Mamet's foul-mouthed, stabbing dialogue. The salesmen's snapping exchanges sound like some nasty staccato form of jazz.

Alec Baldwin weighs in as a sinister Eight. Alan Arkin and Jonathan Pryce both play placating, underdog Nines.
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Network
This film was wildly praised and awarded when it came out, but it's really not very good. Its writer, Paddy Chayefsky, was a One, and his film characters tended to moralize, speechify and eat scenery. Network is supposed to be a dark, outlandish satire of television, but it's mostly just overblown.

Faye Dunaway plays a Three network executive who gets involved with One anchorman William Holden. While he's the movie's voice of moral virtue and integrity, she's amoral and predatory. Her name is Diana (The Huntress - get it?) and she describes herself thus: "I was married for four years and pretended to be happy. I was in analysis for six years and pretended to be sane. I seem to be inept at everything except my work, so I limit myself to that. All I want out of life is good ratings."

Away for a weekend with Holden, all Dunaway can talk about is TV programming, even during sex. She too lives in scenarios but is not an intimate subtype. Dunaway's character is more social, concerned with results and prestige as a measurement of self. She's totally identified with her job.

Holden the One gets to make smug, virtuous speeches. As Chayefsky's mouthpiece he passes easy judgment on Dunaway. He breaks up with her because she's heartless and measures herself by externals, two facts he recognized the nanosecond he met her. Holden's character also speaks in odd, self-conscious stereotypes, saying things like, "Dammit, I'm supposed to be the Romantic and you're supposed to be the Embittered Cynic."

Peter Finch plays a probable phobic Six, an anchorman who has a psychotic break on the air ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"). Robert Duvall is a nasty, ruthless Eight named Hackett ("Hack it" - get it?).
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Rain Man
Tom Cruise is just fine as a shallow, opportunistic Three whose heart starts to thaw towards his autistic savant brother, played by Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman got all the attention for his performance but Cruise gives a subtle shading to Threeish narcissism. His character's emotional warming and ethical changes are gradual, believable, and consistent with how Threes grow. They do it for love.

Hoffman is a Six, often plays them and his autistic character here works out to be a Six, too.
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Ride The High Country
Classic Western about two aging gunfighters hired to escort gold from a mining camp back to civilization. Some of the dialogue and all of the music is corny, but the film is otherwise kind of wonderful. Chief pleasure is watching old pros Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea playing a Three and a One respectively.

Scott has a slightly smaller role than McCrea's but he's plenty vivid. We first see him costumed, disguised as a Wild West Hero working a stand in a carnival. He signs on with McCrea to guard the gold but secretly intends to steal it. This necessitates role-playing with his old friend, but Scott's personal sentiments are real. He shows evidence of both wings and the two men spend a lot of time warmly reminiscing. Part of the tension of the story is guessing what Scott will ultimately do about the gold. He's charming but calculated, goodhearted but morally ambivalent. He behaves as though the end justifies the means, yet he does have loyalties. Sort of a scoundrel and yet very appealing.

McCrea, by contrast, is straight as a gun barrel. He's prone to judgmental ranting that he punctures with amiable self-mocking humor. His 9 wing brings a steady, receptive quality. He searches for fair, balanced and legal solutions to problems. He polices Scott's unstable young protégé, a half-cocked, counterphobic Six. Faced with the religious zealotry of another One, McCrea calmly and wittily undercuts the man. Still, he turns merciless when he discovers Scott's plan to steal the gold. McCrea's character is probably a self-preservation subtype. He's a bit of a worrier and has survival on his mind.

James Drury, the miner who gets married, is a Seven with an 8 wing. At least one of his brothers is an Eight and the alcoholic justice of the peace is a Nine.
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Wall Street
Director Oliver Stone's enjoyably trashy indictment of rampant greed. Charlie Sheen plays a young Three stockbroker climbing up the ladder of success into thin air. Early in the film he is competitive, ambitious, and outcome-oriented. He has a flimsy hold on consequence and soon strikes a Faustian bargain with ruthless tycoon Michael Douglas, an Eight. Sheen is another social subtype - he wants money, objects, trappings and totems of success.

Sheen's father (Martin Sheen) is a One against whom Charlie has modeled. In fact, the son is helping Douglas buy the airline his father works for in order to sell it off in pieces, corporate raider style.

The turning point comes when the father has a heart attack, brought on by the stress of his company being raided. This personalizes the suffering Sheen is helping Douglas to cause and Sheen's own heart begins to open. He is arrested for his wheeling and dealing, and has a painful awakening of conscience.

Several things are noteworthy. The Three/One dynamic is active here. Sheen's father is an angry, intense One with a 2 wing. The clash between son's ambition and father's ethics is very explicit ("There's no nobility in poverty anymore, Dad"). This argument is echoed at the Wall Street firm where Charlie works. Hal Holbrook plays an older One broker who moralistically cautions Sheen about the consequences of actions. The young man dismisses him as the voice of antiquated principle ("I'm shooting for the stars").

On the other side of the moral moat is Douglas's Eight. The amoral corporate raider is concerned with strength rather than rules. Winning is important as a way to prevail and dominate events. At one point he makes a speech about how "Greed is good." It's an Eight speaking with narcissistic justification. Principles are for sissies, integrity is a luxury, etc.

This attitude appeals to Sheen as long as his heart is closed. For a confused Three, winning can be a way to be somebody. For an Eight, winning would be a way to feel strong. Both styles are narcissistic but are motivated differently. Of course, a One would disapprove of either motive.

Douglas, by the way, is quite good and has a scene that is very telling about Eights. He's seen walking on the beach at sunrise ruthlessly scheming with Sheen over a portable phone. Suddenly he breaks off the war-talk and stands awestruck at the beauty of the sunrise. This may seem incongruent, but it shows an unguarded innocence of perception that Eights often have (see "Eights").
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