The Ghost Writer
Roman Polanski | UK | 2010
128 min
Roman Polanski is a consummate artist. The Ghost Writer could be described as a political thriller and then left at just being that, but it is so much more. Encompassing some of the director’s favourite motifs, it is the quintessential Polanski film, representing his uncompromising nature and drenched in the harsh pessimism shaped by his own tumultuous personal life.
Full of heightened intrigue, the film opens with the discovery of a body washed up at shore. When Ewan McGregor’s character (listed during the end credits simply as ‘The Ghost’) is given the job of ghostwriting the memoir of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Brosnan, still suave after his post Bond prime), we learn that the body was of Lang’s long term aide, also the previous ghostwriter. McGregor’s character is given the unenviable task of rewriting the draft and finishing it for publication in just under a month. Escorted to a picturesque yet stormy seaside resort in Martha’s Vineyard, where Lang now resides, the writer arrives just as allegations against Lang start to mount for authorizing the illegal torture of terror suspects and shipping them off to US soil whilst in power. As former political foes and the media demand a trial of the ex-PM, the writer unknowingly uncovers a conspiracy that slowly starts to both engulf and endanger him.
In its execution, Ghost Writer is a culmination of all of Polanski’s favourite themes brought under one cinematic roof. Lang’s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams, brilliant and bitchy in the films meatiest role) turns from being a distressed subject to savvy conniver in the sexual power play that ensues – shades of Polanski’s Knife in the Water and Cul-De-Sac clearly evident in the way seemingly normal relationships disintegrate. The isolated island setting also harks back to memories of both those films but also the residential confinement of Repulsion and The Tenant. Even the premise of an investigative quest based on a book are a reminder of Polanski’s The Ninth Gate, with this film coming off as being an improved version of it. The allusions to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are both obvious and intentional but there is something of Polanski himself in the character of Lang. Ostracized, relentlessly pursued by media hounds who’ve turned him into their whipping boy and scapegoat, confined to a remote location away from home, the director must have seen the obvious parallels with himself in him but despite this, he doesn’t show Lang any sympathy. If anything, the director’s trademark cruelty engulfs Lang most severely.
Only someone with the remarkable, precise directorial capabilities of Polanski could make even an innocuous house worker look sinister and here he drenches the films entire mood and look in beautifully muted greys. With this film, he reminds us that not all modern auteurs need be burdened by the pursuit of awards recognition or the need to evolve their craft and turn into entertainers in an effort to remain watchable. The screenplay, based on Robert Harris’ novel of the same name and co-written by Polanski himself, is first rate, exhibiting an ear for dialogue and sharp, sometimes acerbic wit. Together, they make the viewer persistently uneasy, promising (and delivering) on something being fiendish awry – the climax involving a long, hypnotic tracking shot and the very final scene of the film are particularly memorable. In a good film, no event or dialogue is ever unnecessary; in Ghost Writer, every frame is purposeful. The pent up suspense is decidedly old school with none of the superficial shock thrills we’ve come to expect from contemporary cinema, the film being all the more effective because of this, though unsophisticated viewers will find ways to describe this as being sluggish. Even the score by Alexandre Desplat hits all the right notes. Ghost Writer has been called Hitchcockian, but I think its time to set the record straight; this film is absolutely and unashamedly Polanskian, for there is no better way to describe it.
