Movie Review: "The Ghost Writer"

This movie, starring a solid Ewan McGregor and directed by the world famous (and infamous) Oscar winning director, Roman Polanski, is a very good film. The title, however, is unfortunate. It's a completely appropriate and logical title for what the film is, don't get me wrong. It just has the unfortunate problem of being confused with this movie:

Or perhaps even works, this after school teen drama:

The former was an atrociously bad comic book revenge movie starring Nicholas Cage. The latter, a 90s show about a bright light (the ghost writer!) that zipped around and helped preteens learn to read or solve murders or something. (The highlight for me is the mid-thirties mail woman affectionately named, "Grandma Jenkins.")

This, however is a different movie entirely. When they don't take the form of moving balls of alien light, ghost writers, in real life, are hired to be the unofficial author of something written by a famous person. They do all the work. The famous person gets all the credit. Many autobiographies are written this way. Songs too. For instance, when Miley Cyrus published her autobiography, Miles to Go, I'm going to venture a (educated) guess that it was the ghost, not Miley, who did the writing. I make this educated guess with the knowlege that had Miley, herself, indeed written said book, it would have looked much more like this, "i m soooooo much bttr thn that selena gomez. m i rite? l8r h8r!"

In any case, McGregor plays the "Ghost" to former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). Surrounded by recent scandal, Lang has taken up residence in a multimillion dollar house on an island off the east coast. This is where much of the action takes place, though perhaps action isn't the word. Many people complain that this film is boring. I agree to an extent. I think it is boring to anyone who's used to the plot of whatever film their watching dragging them along as quickly as possible so as not to lose them. That's how we, Americans, commonly make films anyway. There's even explosions in Julia Roberts movies for pete's sake. This film takes its time. It's risky to put out a film like this in a time when most movie goers expect to be thrilled and surprised. This film did thrill and surprise me. I just had to be patient first.

So much of this film is mood. The location where they shot is stunning. It's grey and nearly always rainy. (A metaphor for how this dishonored ex diplomat feels as the world turns against him perhaps?) There is a mystery here, but it doesn't neatly unfold at just the expected time the way that most films of this genre do. It's much too smart and well made for that. You can always tell when you're watching the work of a master director. Everything feels so exact, so planned and organized. As if he has firmly grasped your hand and is leading you through this story. You get that sense here. Say what you will about Polanski's personal life and his past sins, but they're completely irrelevant here. His direction is what should be discussed and it's flawless.

The highlight of this film is Olivia Williams. She's been in many things over the years, but perhaps never really give the right role or the freedom to shine. And here, shine she does. She's fantastic and its possibly the best part of the film. The other acting is quite strong too. Kim Cattrall fubbs her British accent pretty spectacularly every time she speaks, but McGregor and Brosnan both do some of their best work in years.

There was something that struck me as interesting (and distracting) during this film, however. Numerous times they dubbed over the f word with other words tv stlye. I would suggest maybe they read my previous post on the subject, however 'chicken faggot' was no where to be found either. It was odd and off setting and I'm not sure why they did it. Probably to garner a PG-13 rating in hopes to do more business, but in this day and age that hardly seems necessary. This, however, is only one small mistep in what truely is a great film.

A-