THE GHOST WRITER
It was a pretty good week here at The Film Files. Two of our greatest living directors are up against each other, going head to head in a brutal box office contest. This time we have Roman Polanski, of the recent house arrest, with a modest and tidy little political thriller. He goes up against Martin Scorcese and Shutter Island, a bone chilling psychological thriller.
There really isn’t anything psychological about this thriller, it’s political intrigue on a small but referential scale. Polanski and Robert Harris, adapted Harris’ novel, The Ghost which centers on the events surrounding ex-prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan.) Mired in controversy because his involvement with the U.S. in the Iraq war debacle, his working on his memoirs and needs a ghost writer to finish getting them into shape. Our guide through the narrative is that “The Ghost” (Ewan McGregor), unnamed just as Daphen du Maurier’s second Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca is. The action begins when he, somewhat reluctantly, agrees to take over from a predecessor who, unfortunately, fell off of the ferry going to what is supposed to be Martha’s Vineyard, where Lang is living and writing in self-imposed exile.
Things start to go awry almost immediately, as The Ghost is mugged leaving the publishers offices in London, having just accepted the assignment. For awhile he’s staying at an empty inn while working at the concrete bunker of a “home” where Lang, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and his devoted personal assistant, Amelia (Kim Cattrall) are also residing. Things become chaotic when the former British Foreign Secretary under Lang, Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh) suggests that the International Criminal Court in the Hague investigate Lang’s role in rendition. Suddenly the island is under siege forcing the Ghost to move into the bunker, as well as to issue a statement on Lang’s behalf.
The Ghost, our eyes and ears, is dropped haplessly into the middle of constantly changing situation, something entirely unexpected yet irresistibly exciting. He’s a writer after all, a successful and skilled one who has made an excellent living ghosting for people, writing in other people’s voices while suppressing his own. In that sense, he’s a bit of a weakling and McGregor who has an attractively weak presence inhabits him perfectly. He’s funny, irritating and someone, who although clearly intelligent, makes one unwise choice after another, leaving us rolling our eyes and muttering at the screen. In that sense, there are lots of amusing digs at and for writers: we are often almost hapless victims as we follow a million different trails to nowhere.
I have recently rewatched Tess, Polanski’s 1980 masterpiece of the Thomas Hardy novel, a marvel of stunning visual beauty. I’ve also been closely following his legal problems as nicely presented in the 2008 documentary by Marina Zenovick, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. What makes Polanski so fascinating as a director is his breadth: he has managed to imprint his genius widely, he seems endlessly fascinated by and attracted to different genres. There is psychological horror of Rosemary’s Baby, the noir thriller, Chinatown, Tess is an English period, almost gothic tragedy in theme but romantic epic in visual style. The Pianist, is a somewhat personally inflected, holocaust survival film, based on a memoir.
The Ghost Writer is a very good film, not my personal favorite, but well constructed, as Polanski’s films always are with his obsessive attention to detail. I grew up taking the ferry that The Ghost takes back and forth to and from the island, and I’d say the feeling of dreary isolation, as well as the actual physical surroundings are just about perfect. The tone veers between comically playful and absurd, peopled by preposterously self serious characters from Ruth to an always superb Tom Wilkinson as a Yale grad/CIA spy/Harvard Professor, and more typically puzzle piece, mystery. The kicker, and perhaps what raises the picture several notches above many of it’s type, is the ending, which is, finally, what transforms the run of the mill who-dun-it into the sophisticated and memorable thriller.
The Ghost Writer opens February 19. 2010.
Directed by Roman Polanski; written by Robert Harris and Roman Polanski, based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris; Director of Photography, Pawel Edelman; editor, Hurvé de Luze; music by Alexandre Desplat.
With: Ewan McGregor (The Ghost); Pierce Brosnan (Adam Lang); Olivia Williams (Ruth Lang); Kim Cattrall (Amelia Bly); Tom Wilkinson (Paul Emmett); James Belushi (John Maddox); Timothy Hutton (Sidney Kroll); Robert Pugh (Richard Rycart); Jon Berthal (Rick Ricardelli) and Eli Wallach (Old Man.)
