The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer

128 Minutes

Midway through Roman Polanski’s newest film, The Ghost Writer, after realizing that no, it probably wasn’t going to get any better, I found myself idly pondering the meta-cinematic implications of what I was watching. Was Polanski perhaps using Pierce Brosnan’s character, a disgraced former British PM facing the possibility of permanent exile as a directorial stand-in, a plea for audience sympathy towards his own all-too-familiar legal troubles? Were the dozens of clichéd moments, desiccated tropes, leaden line-readings and thuddingly obvious turns of plot meant as some sort of Brechtian technique for the creation of a genre-specific critical reflection space? Did Polanski mean for me to be thinking about old “Scooby-Doo” episodes when Eli Wallach’s crotchety Old Man character suddenly popped up spouting ominous clues and offering timely hints? I somehow doubt it. And since Polanksi and co-writer Robert Harris surely couldn’t have meant me to take any of their ham-fisted political commentary seriously, I soon gave up this line of questioning and instead began to ponder the fact that Ewan McGregor, that ever-hapless black hole of charisma, is still somehow considered to be a movie star.

OK, so here’s the plot. McGregor plays a hack writer (for no good reason never referred to by name, the credits simply listing him as “The Ghost”) who agrees to take on the task of finishing up the political autobiography of one Adam Lang (Brosnan), a Tony Blair-analogue, after the previous ghost writer assigned to the job suddenly died in mysterious circumstances. It seems that Lang is in a spot of trouble over the revelation that whilst in office he authorized the abduction of four British citizens inside Pakistan who were subsequently taken to a secret CIA black-ops site and waterboarded. So here we have our man Ghosty trying in vain to navigate the tricky interpersonal pathways that wind their way between Lang, his brittle, yet seductive and politically acute wife (Olivia Williams) and his catty personal assistant and mistress, played by Kim Cattrall. All the while trying to finish the book, deal with the press and shine some light on a series of mysteries surrounding Lang’s murky past as well as a possible explanation for Britain and The United States’ curiously chummy post-9/11 relationship. Oh, and also trying to avoid winding up dead like his erstwhile colleague.

All of which could have been the basis for an exciting political thriller, a biting “War on Terror” satire, an intriguing mystery movie or all three, and yet somehow The Ghost Writer ends up being mostly just boring. Moody, sure. Well acted, for the most part (especially by Tom Wilkinson, who plays a shadowy CIA spook). Alexandre Desplat’s evocative score and the Winslow Homer-esque grayness of the New England setting provided by cinematographer Pawel Edelman (with an at times too obvious dollop of computer-aided effects) both did their jobs adequately well. And Polanski has always been a visually inventive director; at times the mise-en-scène reminded me of certain scenes in Chinatown. And yet the distance between this film and that former glory could not have been greater: whereas in Chinatown Polanski manages to both provide a loving homage to and a serious continuation of the noir films of the ’40s, The Ghost Writer adds nothing to the political thriller genre nor to any of Polanski-as-Auteur’s previous themes and preoccupations. It just sort of sits there on the screen, pathetically hoping to be liked. And I sat there in the audience, hoping that Roman Polanski will either turn himself in to the authorities or make another film that has something to say.

by Shannon Gramas