Ghost Writer

If you like Ewan MacGregor you will like this film; there’s not much else going on. Ghost Writer is a thriller, with a conspiracy twist, all tied up with the latest news headlines about the Iraq war. Pierce Brosnan plays Adam Lang, a Tony Blair style former British Prime Minister who may have been involved in some really bad Blackwater torture kind of stuff; MacGregor is hired to ghost write Lang’s autobiography after the previous ghost writer committed suicide, or suffered a horrible accident. Or was murdered; this is a thriller after all, and anyone who’s ever seen a thriller knows that if a BMW is abandoned on a ferry after it docks in a blinding rainstorm, well, there must have been foul play.

Macgregor’s character (who remains unnamed) comes into the project with detached professionalism, until the mysterious behavior of Lang’s staff and the cryptic notes left behind by his predecessor lead him on a reckless course to discover the truth. He seems torn between terror and outrage, but his behavior is less bold than just dumb, like in a horror movie when the girl hears a noise in the basement and decides to investigate, even though it’s pitch black and the power is out because of a crashing thunderstorm. 

Speaking of storms, it rains a lot on the tiny island off the coast of some place back east (actually filmed in Germany, since Polanski isn’t welcome in the US), where the action all happens in an ultra modern house right on the beach. People are always going out in the rain for no obvious reason, coming back drenched and needing to change clothes. In the rare breaks between downpours a handyman tries to sweep the deck with an old fashioned broom, but the wind is always howling so the debris flies right back. We see that all this weather and isolation are metaphorical but it’s never clear why that matters: it’s either embarrassingly obvious (sweeping under the rug?) or so obscure as to be irrelevant, and I prefer the latter because I want to believe that Polanski is still an interesting director. But in Ghost Writer he has only thrown a noirish, stylistic wash over a meager little story, leaving his actors adrift. Also starring Olivia Williams as Lang’s apparently suffering wife (if you’re interested in Williams skip this film and see An Education instead), and Kim Cattrall in the femme fatale role – her British accent, or attempt at one, is astonishingly bad. It’s hard to imagine how she even got on Polanski’s radar.  B-


Photo - Summit Distribution