Goodness, the British certainly do hate Tony Blair…
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
There have been any number of political thrillers released in the last few years, the culmination of the ‘lost years’ of America, where the Bush administration, and its allies in England, have come in for a right kicking over any number of right-wing policies. Most of the results have been fairly lukewarm, either due to an institutional timidity, or a teeth-grinding stridency which has led to any number of well-meaning films left to die, unwanted and unloved, in the bargain bins of history.
Fortunately, last year, the British film In the Loop, used the microscope of satire to finally put a cinematic stamp on much of the shenanigans of the last decade. Now, as a sort of sidekick, we have The Ghost Writer, an extremely expert and engaging political mystery based on a pulpy book entitled “The Ghost”, which was written entirely as a sort of kidney punch to the legacy of former England Prime Minister Blair, fictionalized on the page and on the screen as Adam Lang, portrayed with keen gusto by Pierce Brosnan as a mixed drink of Blair and his blueprint, Bill Clinton.
Lang, we learn, has been ridden out of England on a rail, after his support for the War on Terror proves to be untenable in a country long tired of being America’s pet beagle. He has landed in a compound off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, Ruth (an icy, and excellent, Olivia Williams), his assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall, somehow cast as an Englishwoman, and somehow pulling it off just fine), and his auld acquaintance, and ghostwriter, Mike McAra. As the story begins, we learn that McAra is now, in fact, dead. He has apparently drowned, and his body washed up on the beach. This, naturally, means that another ghostwriter is needed, and he soon appears in the form of Ewan McGregor, a failed novelist who makes a living knocking off the sort of quick buck projects that support much of the publishing world. McGregor’s character is a man seemingly without an island of his own. We never learn his name, he has no family to speak of, and he is assigned the task of fixing another man’s work, as McAra’s manuscript is finished but needs to be re-written to the more exacting demands of Lang’s publisher.
Soon after McGregor arrives, Lang learns that he is to be accused of war crimes by his former Foreign Secretary, Robert Rycart, with calls for him to be tried in the International Court. Lang’s attorney then informs him that he will have to remain in America, since, as Henry Kissinger gratefully appreciates, the U.S. doesn’t acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Hague. The pressure is now on not only Lang, but McGregor as well, as his publisher wants the book in a month to take advantage of the media attention, which daily surrounds the house along with political protesters.
Initially a disinterested party, the ghostwriter sets to work on fixing up the manuscript, when he begins to discover clues relating to his predecessor’s investigations, which may or may not have led to his untimely demise. It is our protagonist’s wont to attempt to untangle the many tendrils of not only Lang’s political origins, but of McAra’s demise. This leads him up and down the Vineyard on a snipe hunt that may, or may not, reveal the truth as he meets an assortment of characters with a story to tell. But, as the ghostwriter learns more and more, we are left to ask ‘What does it mean?”
Roman Polanski, who knows a thing or two about international persecution, masterfully culls all of this together into a taut and delightful thriller, something else that he knows a bit about, having directed some of the darkest mysteries of the last 50 years, starting in 1962 with Knife in the Water. Polanski is able to use a cast of waiver wire pickups (Cattrall, Jim Belushi, Eli Wallach), veteran pros (Brosnan, Williams, Tom Wilkinson), and a once-prized prospect who never quite made it big (McGregor), combined with a best-selling novel, and enough barely-disguised winks towards the recent past (picking out the villains of the decade can be done as a parlor game, if you so choose) to earn comparisons to brilliant echoes of the genre like Parallax View and The Manchurian Candidate. Polanski’s long-standing refusal to find silver linings for his characters blissfully remains intact, which leads to my favorite ending to a movie in a long time, and makes The Ghost Writer, much to my surprise, my favorite movie of the year so far.
How Tony Blair feels about it, we can only guess. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Rated PG-13
DVD Release Date: 8/3/10