Busting the Ghost Writer

Eye Weekly’s Jason Anderson wrote a few weeks ago that Shutter Island is “a great Dario Argento movie.” I’d like to propose that Roman Polanski is a great Dario Argento. Some random entries in his filmography: the slapstick horror film The Fearless Vampire Killers; the psychological thriller The Tenant; the unabashedly erotic Bitter Moon; the Satanic thrillers Rosemary’s Baby and The Ninth Gate; even Macbeth, which Polanski turned into a gory horror thriller. He may be an art-house stalwart, but dare I say that Polanski is the best living exploitation filmmaker? Like most of the really good trash-peddlers, he transcends genre, using its potential for lurid excess as a venue for his own preoccupations, and as an ideal medium for sensual pleasures (as his movies always look great) and emotional charge.

But maybe I picked the wrong time to pull out my Dario Argento comparison, since The Ghost Writer is one of Polanski’s more restrained thrillers. Based on a Robert Harris novel, it was originally called The Ghost—a much better title, since it better represents the film’s chilly, downbeat ambience. Ewan McGregor plays “the Ghost” (yes, that’s how he's credited), a failed writer hired to author the memoirs of the controversial former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), under fire for allegedly authorizing torture and for his questionably legal wars.

The film is set in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts but was filmed (for obvious reasons) in Germany. Wherever it is, the island has a blandness that is kind of menacing—all dry fields and gloomy forests and gravel roads that stretch into nowhere. There’s nary a soul for miles apart from the occasional surly old-timer (played here by Eli Wallach), and during the stormy scenes the place looks almost godless. Rarely has nature seemed so flatly functional.

“Flatly functional” would also be a good descriptor for Adam Lang. A disgraced pretty-boy charged of always acting in the United States’ best interests, he’s an obvious Tony Blair surrogate, though suggestions that he was an empty-headed puppet for the will of powerful men give him a distinctly Bush-ian aura. He’s such an opaque character that I suppose it’s a compliment to Brosnan to say that I could never really get a handle on his performance. He’s friendly and affable in a mechanical sort of way—intimidating when stern, potently handsome but old enough to pass for an elder statesman. He generally handles himself with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Brosnan’s performance is totally poker-faced, never giving any hints as to what, if anything, is beneath the surface.

The film doesn’t have the zip and pulse of Polanski’s more outré potboilers—it’s more of a mood piece, constructed like a long slow burn. The sparse setting plus the vague, shadowy villains create an intangible atmosphere of despair. The film is such a slow burn, in fact, that it generates a level of anticipation that makes the final twist feel strangely anticlimactic. The way McGregor discovers the big reveal is thuddingly lame, and as for the reveal itself, isn’t it a little redundant when the shocking revelation only confirms that certain shady characters are indeed shady?

Among the Polanski oeuvre, The Ghost Writer calls to mind Chinatown (1974) with its investigation structure, stately pace, and political content. One of the bleakest films of the New Hollywood movement, Chinatown tapped into feelings of alienation both in post-Watts Los Angeles and post-Vietnam America with its downbeat, revisionist take on the private eye genre. The Ghost Writer is much more overt, set in a post-Iraq, post-Bush political climate. It’s generally compelling material, and it is admirable of Polanski to attempt to make a film that is in conversation with contemporary politics, but I can’t help feeling it would have had more bite a few years ago.

Familiar as Polanski’s political insights may be, he delivers them with a sense of sheer nihilism that is sort of bracing. The denouement of The Ghost Writer seems to imply that moral men are powerless when pitted against the rich, corrupt elite. This is a familiar idea—even in the Polanski universe—but what’s alarming about film’s final scene is how cynically abrupt it is. The film builds and builds and builds to a big confrontation, only for him to tell us we’re foolish for ever thinking such a confrontation would ever take place in anything resembling the real world. He denies us even the possibility of hope. Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.

The Ghost Writer opens in theatres March 5