Reel Critic - 9/16/10

Much to the chagrin of those who demand that personal tales must color a man’s professional output, Roman Polanski, the scourge of feminists and the right-wing culture police alike, has made a fine, spare thriller that has nothing to do with its director’s own sordid story. The Ghost Writer is at once a modern and old-fashioned film. Ewan MacGregor, character unnamed, is a protagonist very much in the mold of current solitary men who discover grand conspiracies on the brink of unraveling, such as Matt Damon in the Bourne trilogy or George Clooney in Michael Clayton (or Syriana, or, by the looks of it, The American). Though the alienated loner is by no means a new fictional concept, there’s a certain 21st century weariness and wry sense of humour to MacGregor’s character. At the same time, The Ghost Writer recalls the paranoid political thriller of the Nixon/Cold War era of deep government distrust in its content and style, a genre Polanski is familiar with as the director of Chinatown, perhaps the greatest indictment of American corruption — both political and moral — ever put to film.

Superficially, The Ghost Writer has an obvious political target: Tony Blair’s unlikely friendship and wartime alliance with George W. Bush, and their dark, unresolved history of torture. There is no attempt to conceal references to recent political players and events, although as the film progresses they matter less and less. Pierce Brosnan plays Adam Lang, disgraced former Prime Minister of Britain. Lang has been offered obscene amounts of money to write a juicy memoir — by the way, Tony Blair’s much-anticipated memoir, “A Journey,” was released this month to moderately disappointed reviews — but his first ghost writer is found washed up dead on some stormy New England shore. With only a dull draft of the book in place, Lang must hire a new ghost writer: his fiercely opinionated and sharp wife Ruth suggests MacGregor’s character, mostly referred to as “the Ghost” or “man.” The Ghost is unmarried, with no evident family and few friends. He knows little about politics, and is hired based on his treatment of a sports celebrity’s memoir. He is flown to a desolate part of Martha’s Vineyard that seems to be at all times deserted, drenched in rain, and freezing cold, with a 90 percent chance of ominous thunder. (The actual filming location is, of course, Germany, due to Polanski’s inability to enter the United States; he completed post-production while under house arrest in Switzerland. At his ski chalet, natch: the man suffers in style.)

Lang is reluctant to spend more time than he has to with the Ghost, who nonetheless extracts a few charming college stories from him, but Ruth (played excellently by Olivia Williams), takes a special interest in him. Her husband is having an affair with his icy assistant (an atrociously accented Kim Cattrall, last seen terrifying the nation in Sex and the City 2, also a meditation on American corruption). Though Ruth mocks the Ghost for his previous, less distinguished writing efforts, she uses him as an emotional and intellectual receptacle. Perhaps the Ghost’s lack of personal background makes him seem safe, but as a blank slate upon which stories are casually tossed, he absorbs and retains important details.  The events surrounding the previous ghost writer’s death — unambiguously mysterious from the start — begin to reveal themselves to him, and he gets drawn in to the more sinister aspects of his employer’s past. Within two weeks of his working on the memoir, a major media story about Lang’s use of torture breaks, and Lang is indicted for war crimes by the ICC (wishful thinking here on the part of some European producers, surely). He is forced to stay in the United States, while protesters soak in the New England downpour outside his home, waving inspired WAR CRIMINAL signs and screaming epithets. The Ghost, too, is stuck on this dreary island, embroiling himself in the controversy his predecessor had discovered to the point where he begins to fear for his life. Much of what makes the movie compelling is its moody cinematography, visually stunning and disturbing at the same time, with vast expanses of gray offset by the cold, clinical lines of the Langs’ ultramodern glass home. Yet at the end, this tight thriller is almost too conventional; its reveal, though beautifully delivered, is not nearly good enough for its fantastic set-up. Its twist is also given away with a ludicrously unbelievable plot device. The final scenes, however, are perfectly constructed, a quick and brutal reminder of Polanski’s overarching philosophy of the culture of power: it is ruthlessly efficient at self-preservation.