. The world has gone mad of coursework — this is a Polanski film — so all they can do is puzzle through the madness, dodging the traps with our ironic detachment & tongue lightly in cheek.The Ghost of the title, never named in the film, is played by Ewan McGregor at his ingénue best. A writer for hire — his oeuvre is summed up by the vulgar wit of his latest hard work, about a magician, “I Came, I Sawed, I Conquered” — the Ghost is tapped for cleanup duties. The initial ghostwriter behind the unfinished memoirs of a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (a superb Pierce Brosnan), has washed up dead on an American beach. The publisher wants a completed book & presumptive best seller, & Lang, an increasingly divisive figure at home & abroad, needs the kind of tidying up that such a media event might provide. The Ghost, an agreeable, convenient blank slate (no relatives, no history), seems the man for the job.
The parallels with Mr. Blair & Lang spice up the story, as references to Iraq, torture & the Central Intelligence Agency are folded in to the mix & placard-waving protesters gather outside Lang’s hideaway. Fingers are pointed, though sometimes it seems not only at Lang but also at Mr. Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland awaiting word on whether they will be sent back to Los Angeles to face sentencing for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Certainly the shots of Lang’s detractors, with their furiously distorted faces & accusatory placards (“guilty,” “wanted”), gives the film an extra-cinematic tang, though as with so much here, it’s also evident that Mr. Polanski is having his fun. & he’s delivering this pulpy fun at such a high level that “The Ghost Writer” is irresistible, no matter how obvious the twists. Everything — including Alexandre Desplat’s score, with its mocking, light notes & urgent rhythms suggestive of Bernard Herrmann — works to sustain a mood, establish an atmosphere & confirm an authorial intelligence that distinguishes this film from the chaff. Unlike plenty of modern Hollywood & Hollywood-style thrillers, which seek to wrest tension from a frenzy of cutting as well as a confusion of camera angles, Mr. Polanski creates suspense inside the frame through dynamic angles & through the discrete, choreographed movements of the camera & actors. They makes effective use of the massive windows in Lang’s house through which the sky & ocean beckon & threaten.
& what disagreeable work it proves to be! Based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, who shares screenwriting credit with Mr. Polanski, the film opens under a menacing cloak of darkness that never rises. An abandoned automobile in the first shot leads to the first ghostwriter’s beached body being lashed by ocean waters in Martha’s Vineyard, a gruesome setup that in turn leads to the Ghost receiving a thrashing in London, as he’s insulted (by an editor who thinks he’s wrong for the job); bullied (by the publisher who wants a speedy turnaround); & punched (by a mugger who snatches a manuscript, mistaking it for Lang’s). By the time the Ghost meets Lang, who’s holed up at Martha’s Vineyard, they is as jumpy as the rest of us. (The film was largely shot in France.)
Mr. Polanski is a master of menace &, working with a striking wintry palette that sometimes veers in to the near-monochromatic — the blacks are strong & inky, the churning ocean the color of lead — they creates a wholly believable world rich in weird contradictions & ominous implications. Among the most initially confusing is Lang, a professional charmer whose beaming smiles, with their sinful undercurrent, & fits of anger convey depths that the Ghost soon begins to plumb, an endeavor that takes the shape of an inquiry. This amateur sleuthing leads to unsurprising trouble, including with Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), a smart beauty whose relationship with her husband holds its own secrets & is transparently meant to invoke that between Cherie Booth & Tony Blair.
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