The Ghost Writer (film)

''The Ghost'' — released in the US as ''The Ghost Writer'' — is a 2010 British/French/German co-production '' film à clef'' neo-noir political thriller film directed by Roman Polanski. The film is an adaptation of the 2007 ''roman à clef'' novel, '' The Ghost'', by Robert Harris with the screenplay written by Polanski and Harris. It stars Ewan McGregor in the title role with Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, and Olivia Williams.

The film was a critical and commercial success and won numerous cinematic awards including Best Director for Polanski at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival and also at the 23rd European Film Awards in 2010.

Plot

A nameless British ghostwriter is hired by London-based publishing firm Rhinehart, Inc. to complete the autobiography of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, because the Ghost's predecessor and Lang's aide, Mike McAra, has recently died in a supposed drowning accident. Lang's Washington lawyer gives him a manuscript, which two thugs later assault and rob him for. The Ghost travels to Old Haven on Martha's Vineyard, where Lang and his wife Ruth are staying at a complex with Lang's personal assistant, Amelia Bly. Outside the gate, anti-war protesters are demonstrating with a bereaved father who rants that his son died "in one of Lang's illegal wars". Later in the evening, when the Ghost is at the hotel bar, he coldly feigns ignorance of Lang's whereabouts to the inquiries from the bereaved father.

Former British Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart accuses Lang of authorizing the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists. Lang faces prosecution by the International Criminal Court unless he stays in the United States. While Lang is in Washington, DC, the Ghost in McAra's former room inadvertently finds a hidden envelope containing photographs with a phone number, which reveal that Lang met Ruth long before Cambridge, and then when he calls the number, meets Rycart.

On a lone cycle ride along the coast, the Ghost meets a longtime resident who reveals that it is impossible for ocean currents to deposit a body on a beach, and that he was assaulted on the night before. Before having a one-night stand, Ruth reveals to the Ghost that Lang and McAra argued the night before the latter's death.

The Ghost takes McAra's hire car with the intent of returning to his hotel, but instead follows the pre-programmed directions on the car's satellite navigation system. This takes the Ghost to the Belmont home of Prof. Paul Emmett, who denies anything more than a cursory acquaintance with Lang, despite several pictures of the pair together belying this. When the Ghost tells Emmett the sat nav proves McAra visited him the night he died, Emmett denies meeting McAra and becomes evasive. When the Ghost leaves, a dark vehicle pursues the Ghost before he eludes it.

When the Ghost drives onto the ferry to return to Martha's Vineyard, the dark vehicle reappears and the Ghost loses the two thugs by jumping off as it leaves harbour. With no one else to turn to, the Ghost asks Rycart for help. At a motel, the Ghost researches links between Emmett and a military contractor as well as the CIA. At a diner, Rycart reveals McAra gave him documents linking Lang to so-called "torture flights", in which terrorist suspects were placed on private jet planes to be tortured while airborne. Rycart claims that McAra found new evidence, which he wrote about in the "beginning of the manuscript". However, they cannot find anything in the early pages.

The Ghost discusses Emmett's relationship with Lang, while Rycart recounts how Lang's decisions as Prime Minister uniformly benefited US interests, with Bly calling the Ghost while airborne in Lang's private executive jet plane, who then has Lang express interest in completing the biography with a hesitant Ghost agreeing at Rycart's encouragement. Lang explodes in outrage after the Ghost confronts accusing him of being a CIA agent recruited by Emmett.

Shortly after landing at Old Haven airport, Lang is assassinated by the bereaved father from a rooftop and the assassin is promptly killed in turn by Lang's bodyguards. The Ghost is asked to complete the book for posthumous publication.

At the book's launch party in London, the Ghost learns that Emmett, who is in attendance, was Ruth's tutor when she was at Harvard. After Bly mentions the "beginnings" of the original manuscript, the Ghost finally understands that the first word of each chapter is the clue and he discovers the message: "Lang's wife Ruth was recruited as a CIA agent by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University". The Ghost passes a note to Ruth revealing his discovery, resulting her becoming perturbed, seeing the Ghost raising a glass to her, but unable to confront him being thwarted by guests. The Ghost leaves the party and as he attempts to flag down a taxi in the street, a car accelerates in his direction, and a thud is heard. Witnesses react in horror, and the pages containing McAra's manuscript scatter in the wind with a police officer remarking, "This one looks nasty".

Cast

Production

Polanski had originally teamed with Robert Harris for a film of Harris's novel ''Pompeii'', but the project was cancelled because of the looming actors' strike that autumn.

Polanski and Harris then turned to Harris's recent best seller, '' The Ghost''. They co-wrote a script and in November 2007, just after the book's release, Polanski announced filming for autumn 2008. In June 2008, Nicolas Cage, Pierce Brosnan, Tilda Swinton and Kim Cattrall were announced as the stars. Production was then postponed by a number of months, with Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams replacing Cage and Swinton, respectively, as a result.

The film finally began production in February 2009 in Germany, at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. Germany stood in for London and Martha's Vineyard. The majority of exteriors, set on Martha's Vineyard, were shot on the island of Sylt in the North Sea, and on the ferry MS ''SyltExpress''. The harbor exterior were shot on both the German island of Sylt, and the Danish island of Rømø. The exterior set of the house where much of the film takes place, however, was built on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea. Exteriors and interiors set at a publishing house in London were shot at Charlottenstrasse 47 in downtown Berlin (Mitte), while Strausberg Airport near Berlin stood in for the Vineyard airport. A few brief exterior shots for driving scenes were shot by a second unit in Massachusetts, without Polanski or the actors.

On his way to the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski was arrested by Swiss police in September 2009 at the request of the US and held for extradition. Due to Polanski's arrest, post-production was briefly put on hold, but he resumed and completed work from house arrest at his Swiss villa. He was unable to participate in the film's world premiere at the Berlinale festival on 12 February 2010.

Non-fictional allusions

Pierce Brosnan plays the character of Adam Lang, who has echoes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The character is linked to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war on terror and the special relationship with the United States. The author of the book on which the film is based has said he was inspired at least in part by anger toward Blair's policies, and called for him to face war crimes trials.

Robert Pugh, who portrayed the former British Foreign Secretary, Richard Rycart, and Mo Asumang, who played the US Secretary of State, both physically resemble their real-life counterparts, Robin Cook and Condoleezza Rice. Like the fictional Rycart, Cook had foreign policy differences with the British Prime Minister. The old man living on Martha's Vineyard is a reference to Robert McNamara.

Release

The film premièred at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival on 12 February 2010, and was widely released throughout much of Europe during the following four weeks. It went on general release in the US on 19 March 2010 and in the UK on 16 April 2010.

For the US theatrical release, the dialogue was censored and re-dubbed with tamer language in order to meet the Motion Picture Association's qualifications for a PG-13 rating. The censored PG-13 version was later used for the US DVD and Blu-ray releases while the uncensored version was retained for most international DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Reception

Box office

The film achieved only modest success, grossing $60.3 million against a budget of $45 million.

Critical response

The film has received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that of critics gave positive reviews based on a sample of reviews with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads, "While it may lack the revelatory punch of Polanski's finest films, ''Ghost Writer'' benefits from stylish direction, a tense screenplay, and a strong central performance from Ewan McGregor." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, gave the film an average rating of 77% based on 35 reviews. At the end of the year, the film placed at #4 in both ''Film Comment'' and ''The Village Voice''s annual critics' polls.

Critic Andrew Sarris wrote that the film "constitutes a miracle of artistic and psychological resilience." Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars and declared it was "the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller." Jim Hoberman of ''The Village Voice'' placed the film at #3 on his year-end list and wrote that "'' The Pianist'' had its moments, but Polanski hasn't made a movie so sustained in the decades since ''The Tenant'' or even 1966's ''Cul de Sac''." Jonathan Rosenbaum would later write that "''The Ghost Writer'' is easily Polanski's best film since ''Bitter Moon'', and certainly his most masterful." Political analyst William Bradley dubbed it "one of the best films I've seen in recent years" in a review for ''The Huffington Post'' that dealt with the film's artistic and political dimensions. ''The Guardian'' said "Roman Polanski's deft take on Robert Harris's political thriller is the director's most purely enjoyable film for years."

However, John Rentoul from the UK's ''The Independent'', who describes himself as an "ultra Blairite with a slavish admiration for Tony", and John Rosenthal, from the conservative Pajamas Media, both denounced the film because it was made with financial support from the German government. Rentoul also criticized Polanski, describing the film as "propaganda" and a "Blair hating movie".

Keith Uhlich of ''Time Out New York'' named ''The Ghost Writer'' the second-best film of 2010, describing it as "what an expertly executed thriller is supposed to be."

Awards

The movie has won numerous awards, particularly for Roman Polanski as director, Ewan McGregor in the lead role, and Olivia Williams as Ruth Lang.

See also

* Film à clef
* The Ghost Writer (soundtrack)
*2010 in film
* List of British films of 2010
* List of films set in New England
* List of fictional prime ministers of the United Kingdom
* Lists of thriller films
* London in film
*'' Roman de Gare'' (France, 2006), by Claude Lelouch (who appears as Hervé Picard), also about a ghost writer.

References

Further reading

* Sebastian Stoppe: ''Merging of Realities, The 'Non'-America in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer.'' In: ''Medienobservationen'' 27 (2023), pp. 1–13, doi: 10.25969/mediarep/20024 (with video essay: doi: 10.25969/mediarep/19717).

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost Writer
2010 films
2010s political thriller films
2010 thriller films
British political thriller films
2010s English-language films
Films about writers
French political thriller films
Films based on British novels
Films directed by Roman Polanski
Films produced by Roman Polanski
Films set in London
Films set in Martha's Vineyard
Films shot in Denmark
Films shot in Germany
German political thriller films
Films with screenplays by Roman Polanski
Summit Entertainment films
Cultural depictions of Tony Blair
Babelsberg Studio films
European Film Awards winners (films)
Films whose director won the Best Director César Award
Films whose director won the Best Director Lumières Award
Films scored by Alexandre Desplat
English-language French films
English-language German films
Films à clef
Fiction about ghostwriting
2010 drama films
Films set in Massachusetts
Films set in Washington, D.C.
Films shot at Babelsberg Studios
2010s British films
2010s French films
2010s German films
English-language political thriller films