The Ghost Writer 2/4
(Summit Entertainment, Rated PG-13)
A moody gothic political thriller riddled with hidden messages about a dubious autobiography of a prominent public figure, The Ghost Writer concocts all kinds of clues about what may be a bit of a covert autobiography of the film’s director/co-screenwriter/co-producer Roman Polanski. Currently under house arrest, Polanski is reported to have continued directing this unfinished film from prison and then his chalet, ultimately delivering to audiences a much more than meets the eye vengeance or vindication—take your pick—with the possibly get-even subliminal settling of old and new personal scores.
Based on the novel The Ghost by British writer Robert Harris and filmed in Germany (filling in for the U.S.), The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as just that—an aspiring scribe-turned-reluctant hack for hire. Nameless and known simply as The Ghost in this story, he agrees to complete the memoirs in progress of former UK Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), following the suspected suicide of the former ghost writer named Mike McAra.
Pierce Brosnan stars in The Ghost Writer.
When The Ghost travels to the seclude island off the coast of Boston where Lang is currently residing, he is soon caught up in a web of scandal and treachery, which involves looming charges against the baffled Lang that as British Prime Minister, he colluded covertly with the CIA in illegally kidnapping and torturing suspected Al Qaida terrorists. And when American protesters and reporters invade the island and McAra’s death comes under increasing suspicion to The Ghost as an assassination, he begins to switch up career moves intermittently between undercover hack and incidental sleuth.
The plot thickens in all sorts of directions, some not quite entirely connected to the story. It’s not just a suddenly blundering CIA that has no problem ferreting out suspected terrorists around the world and can’t seem to corner an awfully nerdy bookworm turned aspiring whistleblower, but rather a somewhat shrewd Polanski dropping distracting clues into the mix that go way beyond the director’s teaser of pretending to make a movie on a U.S. soil he dare not tread in real life, while chiding his former country in a kind of your-crimes-are-bigger-than-mine sly scenario.
Most evident is the befuddled politician Lang, apparently stuck in the U.S., where any attempt to leave a country that has no treaty with the Hague International Criminal Court could bring him face to face with charges that may be pending against him. Audience espionage instincts are further heightened by the machinations of Lang’s ruthless Lady Macbeth spouse Ruth (Olivia Williams), an aggressive extreme seductress who is on the brink of nearly raping the gullible Ghost, cornering him in his tub with an offer of towels to dry his tush. Wonder where Polanski got the idea that females with those irrepressibly cunning instincts of Eve—no matter what age—can ruin a man’s life?
The Ghost Writer was originally set to star Nicholas Cage instead of McGregor, while Brosnan’s puppet politician, in peril seems to have the fingerprints of Polanski all over his character. And in a premeditated art imitating life larger fiction. Who knew?
