The fussy particulars of every stray image, every slightly off-center accent or line reading, make Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer a gloriously fun visually-enthralling puzzlebox, even if the storyline seems a bit thinner, a bit more dependent upon a too-easy associative political anxiety. (And a bit too invested in a shrill misogyny that seems both allusively and reductively Hitchcockian.)
I gather they shot the film in Northern Germany, or some cold dank windy beach on the Arctic edge of that continent, and there’s something wonderfully loony–and uncanny–about how every extra speaks with a slightly different lousy American accent. (Throughout the film, that constant sense that nothing is what it seems is gloriously reiterated through such casting — a weird old local with maybe 5 lines is played by Eli Wallach; Kim Cattrall shows up, with a shite British accent, while Tom Wilkinson trots out a terrible flat American twang, and so on, and so on….)
But the conspiratorial thriller thrives on and thrills to such paranoid displacements–that sense that the vaguely blank eponymous ghost (played with a shrewd quashing of his more typical charisma) is always already confined inside the mechanics of the grim plot. Polanski invests entirely in the pleasures of the form, with just a hint of an ironic overplaying — in those accents, with a strenuous and slow-paced car “chase” — that heightens the delight. MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD>>>
Olivia Williams is OUTSTANDING as the Cherie Blair-like wife–prone to stormy emotions, viciously incisive insults, a real political fervor–and she’s fantastic.
And yet the film seems to delight in using her (or to the initially stiff then ultimately soft aide de camp played by Cattrall) to reiterate rather than comment on the way Mme Blair or women in politics often get used. To use her as a scapegoat, even if in the service of an irony-laden comment on that usage, seems . . . well, less in the spirit of gleeful delight in the form.
dear mike, not sure what you say here, except that this film is beautiful to watch and misogynistic. i think you also say that it is paranoid. i would like to say that, strangely enough (i find everything misogynistic), i didn’t find it misogynistic. maybe it was that its misogyny is of a hitchcockian brand that i fail to recognize, having read tania modleski’s work and garnered from it that, in hitchcock’s films, women kinda rock. i wasn’t particularly stimulated by the visuals, either. the insistent open/mirror quality of the house got on my nerves, like a metaphor that gets played about twenty times too many.
i did, however, like the paranoia, because, when it comes to iraq and related atrocities, paranoia is the proper attitude. having seen this and The Green Zone back to back, i have to say that i feel sorry for paul greengrass. he uses the paranoid angle, too, but i couldn’t fucking wait for the fucking film to be over. this one, i gobbled it on one viewing, which is quite a feat for me these days.
i liked its tremendous silence and the ghost’s tremendous isolation. i also liked that the ghost has very, very few clothes for such a successful guy (i think i have more, and i don’t even have a real job), and that on at least one occasion he puts on the clothes (including the undergarments) that he wore the previous day. the ghost stumbles through the movie in a stolid haze, which is strange given how sharp he supposedly is (or is he? after all, he cannot cut it as a proper writer). we are all worried about him, but he seems uncannily unworried about himself. even after he barely escapes death, he’s still very unguarded and childishly trusting.
yesterday, after watching The Green Zone, i developed a tremendous itch to see paul bremer III in an orange jumpsuit. today, after seeing The Ghost Writer, i would love to see tony blair in one.
since netflix has erected an insurmountable wall between me and my friends, i’ll say here that i gave this gripping, moody, deliberate, stagy film four stars.
i’m sorry, mike, that i’m not better able to understand what you wrote in your review of this film. it’s a very compressed review. i hope you don’t take my playful tone the wrong way. you know i admire the heck out of you.
your friend,
gio.
I gave it 4 stars, too. We should post that here. It still bugs me to lose the Netflix connection.
I’ll explain myself — only two real points. One, in paranoid conspiracy thrillers, there’s often an outsider/investigator. And that person is often a writer (trying to write the story, to control it, to author it). But in the process of investigation, the writer finds himself (almost always himself) having all his actions somewhat pre-conceived by the conspiracy. He thinks he’s “discovering” or uncovering, or in some way controlling, but he’s not. He’s being manipulated. By the end, it’s clear he’s fully caught up by the plot. Even to the extent that his actions further that plot; his “authorship” gets lost — his every action predetermined.
Two, the British press used to tear into Cherie Blair — controlling, hysterical, depressive, the “real man” in the relationship, etc. The movie plays with that public image, exaggerates it hyperbolically. And to some degree that bugged me — even if the film does, in that Hitchockian way, give the PM’s wife some real power, I also felt uncomfortable at the way it reiterated those old stories…
but, still, I loved Olivia Williams’ performance. And, like you, I just enjoyed the heck out of this film.
Funny point about MacGregor’s clothes!
really smart point about the raconteur/investigator in the paranoid conspiracy thriller. this explains the ghost’s hazy fumblings. i would like to suggest, maybe, that this happens more in real life (judith miller? colin powell? i don’t even know if these are good examples. embedded reporters?) than in movies, where the outsider is often supposed to outsmart the conspiracy players and emerge scot-free (off the top of my head, Three Days of the Condor, The Firm). in some cases, the outsider even foils the plot! this is a filmic fantasy polanski astutely and beautifully doesn’t go for, and i’m glad you point it out.
i’m sure you like a lot better films that mimic the way conspiracies beget their own antibodies, not only because it’s more real, but also because it plays right into your lust for entrapment.
oh, another one who thought he was an outsider: barack obama.
as for the second point, i was entirely unaware of the british press’s persecution of cherie blair. point taken.
btw, crazy how the polanski metanarrative plays right into the polanski narrative and you watch his films thinking all along, inevitably, “i wonder where they shot this.” polanski can no longer make movies without creating at least a few feet of distance. which is something he may have intentionally played into with the emphasis he placed on the supposed persecution of adam lang, who may never be able to leave america except to go to iraq or indonesia. ouch.
and then, of course, there is this.
Thanks for the link, Gio. Amazing. I love the line “the hassle caused by the protesters.” Not, “the hassle caused by my book signing” or “the hassle caused by the book I am signing” or “the hassle caused by the lies in the book I am signing” or “the hassle caused by the lies about our reasons for invading Iraq in the book I am signing” or “the hassle caused by the lies I knowingly and deliberately told about our reasons for invading Iraq in the book am signing.” What a prick.
By the way, four stars for The Ghost Writer from me as well.
I haven’t read reynolds’s post yet. But I’ll get around to it after I read A Journey.
A Journey?
laughing at your list of what TB should have said instead!
i got it. A Journey is the lame-o title of tony’s book. now, does everyone think that tony looked a lot cuter before the surgeon stretched the skin on his face?
i appreciate pierce brosnan’s fatuous acting in Ghost more and more.
This fell apart for me when Ewan left the Island. The talking car without William Daniels’ English voice, Tom Wilkerson without William Daniels’ English voice and so on.
Hey, there’s some realistic scriptin’.
Because a security guard will always tell their employer whether or not the person he’s brought down to the car is “clean” or not. And that employer will always politely tell him thanks.
Yet, when Pierce Brosnan all too briefly reappears on the plane, the movie takes off again. He was great. Olivia Williams was great. Timothy Hutton, that handsome devil, wasn’t given nearly enough to do.
I liked how Tony Blair felt he could not leave America for fear of facing criminal charges, that was cute for Polanski. And I liked that it was – a little bit- about books. The Ninth Gate was also – a little bit – about books. More movies about books please.
Re the tedious realism stuff — I wouldn’t defend this reading too much, but there were a few moments I felt the same in Ghost. One long stretch–long, long, long–where we follow McGregor driving to and then from Tom Wilkinson’s house, watching a car come by, maybe following him. Polanski’s done this in a couple of other films–where all of reality is tinged by paranoia, the dull repetitive depictions becoming more than boring–unsettling. Maybe.
Another film that is a similar old-fashioned suspense thriller: I can’t believe it beat out A Prophet for the academy award, but The Secret in their Eyes is quite enjoyable, if predictable. A retired investigator is, in the film’s present recalling (and retracing, as he writes the novel of) an investigation of a rape and homicide. The film intersects with the politics of Peron, and you might see in its generic underpinnings a channeling of the problems of memory and trauma in the years following political oppression. But you’d probably be better off just watching the soapy pleasures of an old-fashioned crime film — with some unrequited passion, a (very funny) sidekick, some real suspense, often gorgeous cinematography. The film also boasts one bravura long-take sequence, starting high in the night sky above a soccer stadium until descending into the crowd to find a suspect. Not great, but entertaining. (‘Though I’d recommend you go read Jeff’s review of A Prophet and see that film, too…)
since we are on the topic of shite, let me be less charitable about the secret in their eyes than mike. the existentialist (empty lives and all that)/romantic stuff is bad, because of its being existentialist/romantic (can we have one or the other, please?), and because of the terrible resolution at the end, which puts them together in unholy alliance. yah, nice photography, and really great bravura sequence at the stadium; nice acting on the part of ricardo darin and the sidekick mike mentions; but this film was competing with a prophet, ajami and the white ribbon at the oscars and won? the music alone should have disqualified it.
the reason why ajami could not have won, of course, is that the academy would not touch the palestinian occupation with a ten foot pole. and you guys should watch it.
I promise I will watch Ajami–it’s available streaming, and looks great. I agree that it’s a crime that Secret beat out those films. (And my favorite that I’ve seen — Police, Adjective — wasn’t even nominated, was it?) A slick middlebrow old-school film will beat out most challengers every day of the week. Alas.
nope, the academy had no love whatsoever for Police, Adjective.
you know, this was a great movie while it was random atmospheric stuff on the island (and mostly when it was in the house). then it turned into something else and went all to shit. give me johnny depp opening the gates of hell any day.