¨Oh yes, the wall of ego. We all have one, our equivalent of the dentist's fish tank. ¨
The Ghost Writer is an excellent thriller that works mainly because Roman Polanski is at the helm of the project. I don`t think this story would have been so gripping or suspenseful if it was put in any other director`s hands, but Polanski has such a fatalistic view of the world that he knows how to create these dark and tense situations and combines them with the right amount of black humor and paranoia. The performance from the cast was also an important ingredient to the success of this film with Ewan McGregor giving a terrific performance, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, and Tom Wilkinson also delivering in the supporting roles. The similarities between Brosnan`s character with real life British former prime minister, Tony Blair, can`t be ignored, even more so considering that Polanski`s adapted screenplay was based on Robert Harris`s (a former BBC reporter and political columnist) book The Ghost, which was written shortly after Blair resigned from office. This is Polanski`s first film in 5 years as a director, and only his second one since 2002 when he won the Oscar for The Pianist. Polanski proves once again why he ranks amongst the best directors in the world showing he is a true master in the craft, creating suspense from the very opening scene, maintaining our full attention throughout the film, and creating several unexpected twists.
The movie opens with a dark scene as a ferry is disembarking on a cold night and one car is left behind with the owner of the vehicle nowhere to be found. The next morning a body is found washed up in the beach and it happens to be that of a ghostwriter who was writing the memoirs for the British former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). It seemed to be an apparent suicide or accident since there was a high amount of alcohol level in his blood, and the memoir didn`t seem to be going very well. A new ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) is hired to try to finish the memoir even though he knows nothing of politics, but the paycheck seems worth it. He travels to the United States where Adam is located for a month and begins interviewing him in order to try to bring some heart to the memoir which according to him was ¨the cure for insomnia, ¨ and there was a lot of work to be done. A lot of suspicious events begin to lead the ghost to do more researching. First of all there is the over protectiveness of the original memoir which can never leave the room and is always locked away in a cabin by Lang`s assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall), then there is the issue that Lang is being accused of crime wars by a former British minister, and Lang`s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) is jealous of her husband`s relationship with Amelia. The ghost begins to investigate some of his predecessor`s findings and after a few interviews with some locals discovers that his death might not have been accidental after all. As the ghost gets deeper in his investigation, his life begins to be threatened.
The film is very well crafted by Polanski who does a great job at creating the right mood for a suspenseful political thriller such as this one. I think that any other director could have turned this film into ¨the cure for insomnia, ¨ but Polanski is a master at what he does and was able to combine suspense, thrills, and twists into this film converting it into a successful movie. Ewan McGregor`s character is probably the key to the entire movie as his investigation of the case serves to inform us about what is going on. We are discovering new things about Lang`s life along with him, and we feel completely lost alongside him wondering what is going to happen next. We can identify and feel the paranoia with him as more and more mysteries become unraveled and his life begins to be threatened. Another key element is Tom Wilkinson`s small role in this film as Paul Emmett, a Harvard graduate that seems to play an important role in Lang`s life although he denies it. Wilkinson is such a great actor and he always adds so much with his performances. He isn`t on screen very much, but those few minutes are memorable nonetheless. McGregor isn`t left behind and he does a great job in the lead role playing one of his best roles in recent memory, as does Pierce Brosnan. Overall this is a great movie and I highly recommend this as one of the year`s best thrillers.
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