One of the most popular British Prime Ministers in recent memory is indicted by the Hague following a deeply unpopular war in the Middle East. It's not terribly hard to imagine whom Robert Harris had in mind when adapting his novel for the screen. It's a bold notion that has given Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and director Roman Polanski (Chinatown) one of the best films of their respective careers. After the mysterious death of his predecessor, McGregor is a ghost writer brought in to compile the memoirs of Adam Lang (Brosnan). It's a mystery that haunts the Ghost (we never learn his name), now trapped by the media frenzy that has besieged the former PM in a US hideaway, fearful that he could meet a similar end.
It's here on the bleak, rain-swept shores of New Hampshire that Polanski dives headlong into a surreal world of claim and counter-claim. For The Ghost Writer is as much a story of subterfuge
as it is one of political intrigue. Who, exactly, is doing what to whom and why is central to pretty-boy Lang's woes; circumstances heightened by a sympathetic secretary (Kim Catrall) with whom he's having an affair, an unsympathetic wife (the delightfully embittered Olvia Williams) with whom the Ghost has an affair, and even the CIA as each play a hand in grisly, secretive matters that come to threaten the nosey writer's life.
It's thrilling stuff that grows increasingly more disturbing thanks to Pawel Edelman's idiosyncratic cinematography and Alexandre Desplat's urgent score against which McGregor and Brosnan offer up some of their best work. There's a terrifically slow build to the film, a rarity these days, that envelops both story and audience in a sense of increasing menace and dread. Polanksi eschews shock and awe for old-fashioned tension that recalls Hitchcock and, well, Polanski. Even in his most deliberate, melodramatic moments it is a great watch made more so by a text-book ending of incredible craft, the culmination of a dazzling tour-de-force.
// COLIN FRASER
It’s been a long wait since Polanski directed Oliver Twist in 2005. He has returned to the silver screen with The Ghost Writer, a taut, political thriller which contains all the elements of deceit and betrayal. Set mostly in the USA, on a wind-swept island on the Eastern seaboard, Polanski pursues the feeling of exile. In this case of a former British PM, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who spends his time surrounded by his caustic wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), his secretary/mistress, Amelia Bly (Kim Katrall) and a bunch of minders.
A British ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), is reluctantly brought on board to ghost the memoirs of the former PM. He is not happy with the assignment because his predecessor died on the job. Prior to leaving for the USA, the ghost writer learns that Lang has been accused by a former British cabinet minister, Robert Rycart (Robert Pugh), of illegally seizing suspected terrorists in Pakistan and handing them over to be tortured by the CIA. Consequently, Lang could be tried for war crimes.
There is a strong similarity between the fictional character in Harris’ novel, The Ghost, with the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. However, the author has claimed that his central character was only, ‘someone based on someone’ and that his interest lay in the examination of power and what happens to those who end up losing it. In this film, the power-play is not only between some characters, for example when we learn that Lang’s wife, Ruth, is competing with Amelia in the female stakes, but also with the press and public, when a decision made in office, comes back to haunt Lang.
The story unfolds like a Hitchcockian thriller as it twists and turns and we follow the ghost writer on a journey which at one stage is being controlled by a satellite navigation device. McGregor’s performance is pitched perfectly as we never really learn much about him and yet we feel real sympathy and at times, are fearful for him. Katrall is at her best as the secretary with underlying sexuality, which she plays so well and Brosnan and Williams are believable as the couple with an intellectual bond, but a jaded romance. There is a small role played by Eli Wallach, who seems to hold one of the keys to the mystery, which is also worth watching out for.
Perhaps the most intriguing character in its own right is the manuscript. Polanski uses it as a central force to the story and the manuscript is protected by the same security surrounding the former PM and his wife. It is interesting to observe that Polanski, like the manuscript, is in exile and contained. The denouement is a little disappointing and predictable and one wonders if this is not a metaphor for his future. After all, history is decided by whoever remains alive to document it. However, Polanski fans will not be disappointed and it is great to see a story unfold from the point of view of the central character, which is Polanski’s trademark, back on the screen at last.
// SALT
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