With his life the subject of a great deal of drama, it's no surprise that Roman Polanski's new film looks into a life-reflecting mirror from time to time. "The Ghost Writer," which opens here today, is a rich, multi-layered, high-tension adventure story in which snippets of real people show up from time to time, advancing the plot and reminding us that we're dealing with Roman Polanski, a great film director.
As good as "The Ghost Writer" is, it is not "Chinatown," one of my all-time favorites, but there are moments when images of that classic pop up. Polanski is a master at building suspense, at letting the string play out a little at a time. Pawel Edelman, the director of photography, makes the north German coast look like Cape Cod, and his dark, sometimes almost-monochromatic pictures offer the perfect blend of beauty and malice. Alexandre Desplat's lush, old-fashioned, score shows an influence of Bernard Herrmann's rich rhythms. It's a grand movie that contrasts sharply with so many second-rate movies made these days in terms of writing, direction, acting and technical details like music and cinematography.
Polanski lets the actors do their work in front of the camera, abandoning such "modern" techniques as rapid-fire cutting and sudden camera movement.
As in so many fine mystery stories, we start with a body washing up on a desolate shore. And then Ewan McGregor receives a call. He's a ghost writer, and such a ghost that Polanski and Robert Harris, who collaborated on the screenplay, based on Harris' novel, don't give him a background, a family, even a name. Only the fact that he's a successful writer of autobiographies. McGregor, who is first-rate, is hired to complete the autobiography of Adam Lang, the former prime minister of England. Lang, played with great style and power by Pierce Brosnan, carries plenty of baggage, so much that even Southwest Airlines would charge him. His wife is the largest piece, portrayed in picture-stealing style by Olivia Williams, and any comparison with Tony and Cherie Blair is not at all coincidental. There also are complications involving Lang's executive assistant–and probably more–Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall).
Many people don't want the book to be written, much less published, as McGregor begins to learn, and many others are lobbying fiercely to make sure that certain other information is put in, or left out, of the story. They include Sidney Kroll, Lang's lawyer (an effective Timothy Hutton) and Paul Emmett, an influential professor (fine work from the remarkableTom Wilkinson). Their work shows the literary depth of the screenplay, and an act such as the casting of the aged and brilliant Eli Wallach for just a cameo demonstrates the care and devotion to the story shown by a director of Polanski's stature, and why he has such stature.
"The Ghost Writer" may not be a great motion picture, but it is a very, very good one, guaranteed to produce intense excitement and total absorption.
Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
–Joe