Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief violence, profanity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.18.10
Buy DVD: The Ghost Writer
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This one's more Hitchcock than many Hitchcock films.
The Ghost Writer looks, sounds and feels like the thrillers Hitch made back in the 1950s, when the Master of Suspense was at his prime. Director Roman Polanski's new drama must be deliberate homage, because it includes many of the same elements: unsettling production design, an isolated setting that gives the story an oddly timeless aspect — despite plot elements that are as contemporary as last month's newspaper headlines — and a moody orchestral score
, by Alexandre Desplat (The Queen
, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
), which sounds like the work Bernard Herrmann did for Hitchcock in (for example) North by Northwest
. |
| After accepting an assignment to edit and enhance the ghosted memoirs of a controversial former British prime minister, our somewhat guileless hero (Ewan McGregor) is dismayed to discover that all work must be done within the locked and heavily guarded confines of his subject's isolated home. Before long, the job takes on even more sinister overtones... |
Best of all, The Ghost Writer is slickly adapted from a thriller by Robert Harris
— who worked on the screenplay with Polanski — a journalist-turned-novelist who also wrote Enigma
, which became an intelligent and vastly under-appreciated film in 2001. I've not yet read The Ghost, but after seeing this film, the book just hit the top of my pending pile. The premise is beguiling: A successful British writer (Ewan McGregor) is offered the job of ghosting the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a controversial former British prime minister. Initially, the assignment isn't all that appealing to our protagonist ... who, true to his profession, never is named in this film. He's more than a little disturbed by the knowledge that his predecessor wound up dead, apparently having fallen off a ferry and drowned.
Such concerns are eased by the impressively huge salary.
Or maybe not. Our "ghost" discovers that he's expected to complete the work within four quick weeks, and that he must fly across the Atlantic that very night, in order to spend as much time as possible with Lang, currently staying at an isolated, heavily guarded compound on an island off the Eastern seaboard. Worse yet, the huge typed manuscript cannot leave the office in Lang's home, where our hero is expected to do all his work.
Things get even murkier once we meet Lang and his wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), and staff, notably the former prime minister's come-hither personal assistant, Amelia (Kim Cattrall). Marital discord and sexual tension hover over this home like a shroud, and the oddly idiosyncratic cook and gardener just add to the overall tension.
