The Ghost Writer (2010) - film review

The former British Prime Minister Adam Lang is about to publish his autobiography, which is of course to be written by an unnamed professional writer.  When the ghost writer originally assigned to the project, former ministerial aide Mike McAra, dies in mysterious circumstances, another British writer is hired to replace him.  Barely before the ink has dried on his contract, the young writer is flown out to the isolated island off the east coast of the United States where Lang resides with his wife Ruth and dedicated staff.  The writer is shown McAra’s manuscript but is instructed he must on no account take it away from Lang’s secure residence.  Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart is seeking Lang’s arrest through the International Criminal Court for his alleged complicity in the extradition and torture of terrorist suspects.  By chance, the writer comes across some incriminating photographs and documents which connect Lang with an important American academic who has CIA connections.  Is it possible that Lang was in the pocket of the CIA throughout his time in office?  As he begins his investigation into Lang’s shady past, the writer soon realises that he is venturing into very dangerous territory...

Roman Polanski’s slick adaptation of Robert Harris’s bestselling novel The Ghost may not have quite the inspired touch of his earlier cinematic achievements but it is nonetheless a highly effective thriller, dark and brooding, with an unmistakably Hitchcockian patina.  The similarities with Polanski’s previous thrillers - Chinatown (1974) and Frantic (1988) - are readily apparent and all three films deal with the same basic plot idea: an incorruptible everyman character is plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare as he pursues a private investigation against a dangerous unseen adversary.  It is a modern reinterpretation of the classic film noir (dubbed neo-polar) that was immensely popular in France in the late 1970s, and the kind of film that Polanski does exceptionally well.

Harris’s novel, a compulsive page-turner if ever there was one, came out just before the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair published his autobiography, and it was pretty self-evident that the discredited Prime Minister Adam Lang in Harris’s book was intended to be read as a carbon copy of Blair.  Polanski goes further than Harris dared in his book in making connections between Lang and Blair and the film’s success at the box office no doubt owes something to this and the wish fulfilment to see Blair brought to account, if only in a work of fiction.  However, to dismiss the film as simply an attack on a tarnished former Prime Minister is largely to miss its point.  What the film is really commenting on is the hysteria that flared up in the later years of Blair’s premiership over his supposed eligibility for a war crimes indictment.  The ease with which the central character in the film - an unnamed, sympathetic ghost writer - allows himself to be duped into thinking Lang is far more than he is contains a chilling echo of the feeding frenzy and mass delusion to which many succumbed following Blair’s resignation.  The problem with easy scapegoats is that they distract us from seeing who the real enemy is - which is very convenient for those who wish it to be so.

Paranoid delusion has featured in many of Roman Polanski’s films and few film directors have managed to convey the trauma of mental breakdown with such dramatic and visual power.  Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976) each offers a terrifying account of a seemingly well-adjusted individual gradually succumbing to psychological collapse triggered by an insane delusion.  Whilst the anonymous hero of The Ghost Writer (superbly played by Ewan McGregor at his most convincing) shows no sign of mental abnormality, he is clearly teetering on the brink of a breakdown, and therefore (in the best tradition of political thriller) incapable of ascertaining who is real enemy is.  It is not until late in the film that we realise Lang is not so much the writer’s nemesis as his shadow, his ghost if you will.  Both men allow themselves to become trapped by their paranoia, and inevitably both end up as unwitting pawns in a dangerous game of political hide-and-seek.  Had he been a few years younger and a little more daring, Polanski would perhaps have made more of this crucial duality and concluded the film with something akin to the wild hysteria of The Tenant’s terrifying denouement.  Instead, he takes a far more sober and ambiguous line, which is perhaps better suited for a modern political thriller.

The fact that Roman Polanski was himself a wanted man at the time he was making the film adds a certain frisson of irony to it.  Dodging an extradition order from the US so that he could face charges of rape in a US criminal court, Polanski had no choice but to make the film in Europe (mainly in Germany).  Before completing the film, he was placed under house arrest for several months at his home in Switzerland, after being arrested whilst on his way to a film festival in Zurich in September 2009 - an incident which has a bizarre parallel in the film.  Fans of Polanski were quick to condemn the US authorities for what they saw as unjustified persecution, and the publicity surrounding the director’s arrest may have contributed to the critical acclaim the film received on the continent.  The film not only won Polanski the Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2010, it also garned him eight César nominations in 2011, including four wins (for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Score) - a rare achievement for an English language film, beating Polanki’s tally of three Césars for his previous success, The Pianist (2002).  The Ghost Writer may owe its initial popularity to the ephemeral politics of the day (anti-American, anti-Blair sentiment), but its obvious technical merit, together with some flawless performances and a compelling storyline, should ensure its longevity and may even earn it a place alongside Polanki’s other great films.

© James Travers 2012

Write a review for this film...

Polanski copies his admirable film Chinatown with less success, the last scene included.  Following the unfortunate ghost writer along the film, the spectator is driven to adopt  the justifiable paranoia of the antihero (Ewan McGregor) (accompanied from the beginning by thriller musical background) to arrive at a familiar discovery of political corruption. What is interesting is that the ghost writer (who tries to give emotion to one of the generally boring pseudo-autobiographies of VIPs) will find out, like his tragically fated predecessor, something true about the life of his subject.  The hand of the maestro (Hitchcock) is noticeable in the scene in which the writer sends (with the help of many intermediaries) a risky note to the Prime Minister’s widow.  Rain, fog, and darkness contribute to the suggestive photography of the film.
Adam Gai (Israel) 

What do you think of this film?