The Ghost Writer (2010)
A film where allusion and illusion come to dance
Based on the Robert Harris novel The Ghost, this Roman Polanski-directed film stars Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, and Pierce Brosnan. Editors will probably dislike how many names were dropped in that single sentence. So let me try that again. This stars of the film are Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, and Pierce Brosnan. The director is Roman Polanski. Having never heard of it before, I stumbled on the film while browsing the Criterion Channel’s catalog. Watching the trailer, I found myself drawn in by—I confess, the delectable McGregor, at the age of 39—but above all, the aesthetics, which are just cool and sharp, and which pair quite well with the chilling effects of suspense and anticipation. It is a dramatic political thriller intended to unnerve you and, yet, it succeeds in a delicate moderation in all things. It is lit to perfection with a balance of dark and light in all the right quantities and offering both actual and metaphorical contrast to every revealing scene. Everything, in short, is cooked just right, the end result being a tasteful Polanski brew, the recipe of which you will never know, and that’s annoying because it can never be brewed again. It follows the genre but also stands apart from it, only just varied enough to be impossible to repeat.
A creeping sense of dread, absolutely never overdone, but never absent, pursues you throughout the film. There are moments, up to and a little beyond the middle point, when we even wonder, what is all this anticipation for? It all feels so mundane, perhaps even pointless. Set mostly in a sinister, minimalistic, high-security compound on Martha’s Vineyard, there is a character who attempts to gather the weeds off the deck that hangs over the beach. The time of year is winter and the wind is brutal, blowing the weeds everywhere, constantly, making the sweeper’s job impossible. It seems to me a perfect metaphor for Ewan McGregor’s impossible job as ghost writer for the shady character played by Pierce Brosnan. Macgregor has taken over the job from his ill-fated predecessor, the oft-referenced Mike McAra, who perished in a suspicious drowning incident. Brosnan plays former British prime minister Adam Lang, a character unmistakably suggestive of Tony Blair—not so much a replica, but tantalizingly en passant. Basically, we have a morally compromised character in the middle of attempting to whitewash his past while that very past is circling him like a shiver of sharks. Ewan McGregor is on the scent, sniffing around for clues as they drop. Olivia Williams portrays one of those sharks. She is subtle. She is sneaky. She play us with a mixture of emotions, some of which are in direct conflict with each other but, played by her, someone congruous. Her character is Brosnan’s wife, Ruth. She cunningly casts aspersions and drops little nuggets for McGregor to pick up. He picks up just enough to determine that her very name is the key to unlocking the mystery and yet the whole truth evades him, and consequently us, to the very end. The reveal comes at the close, when it’s over and we think, well, shit.
It is “perfectly executed,”1 as the film critic Keith Uhlich wrote at the time of its release. Everything is brought together so methodically—timing, lighting, score—and every shot feeds but also teases our anticipation. Polanski was justly praised for his never-failing genius. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian mentioned control,2 something else Polanski is known for. It is a disciplined film. Control, indeed—a disciplined film that never overplays. Well, a writer from that newspaper would approve of a film that flirts with a not-so-subtle vituperation of the global war on terror. As do I. Indeed, the real-life allusions give the entire film a heavy layer of something addictive, like a conspiracy theory you keep having breakthroughs on but never finally solve. It is interesting to watch this film from the future, so to speak. We are looking back on a Blairite character, painted as a Manchurian candidate, from the perspective of everything we have learned about Putin’s Russia and Donald Trump.
It was the film critic Andrew Sarris who pointed out what might be the most fascinating bit of trivia about this film. The principal setting of the story is Martha’s Vineyard. How could I forget that Polanski can’t set foot in the USA? In fact, the film recreates the off limits localities from the coast of the North Sea in Germany! From a soundstage in Berlin, there was added the necessary bit of sorcery. How funny! When Ewan McGregor is seen driving around “Edgartown”, and the details are attended to down to the Massachusetts license plates, we’re actually seeing him driving that BMW (alas, a German car) around the northwest coast of Germany. Blair but not, America but not, a writer but…ghost!
https://web.archive.org/web/20130311122158/https://www.timeout.com/newyork/film/best-and-worst-of-2010
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/feb/12/roman-polanski-ghost-writer