The Ghost Writer (film)

The Ghost Writer The Ghost (United Kingdom title)
US film poster
Directed by	Roman Polanski
Produced by	Roman Polanski Robert Benmussa Alain Sarde
Screenplay by	Roman Polanski Robert Harris
Based on	The Ghost by Robert Harris
Starring	Ewan McGregor Pierce Brosnan Kim Cattrall Olivia Williams with Tom Wilkinson Timothy Hutton Jon Bernthal Tim Preece Robert Pugh David Rintoul with the participation of Eli Wallach
Music by	Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography	Paweł Edelman
Editing by	Hervé de Luze
Distributed by	• Summit Entertainment (United States)  • Optimum Releasing (United Kingdom)
Release date(s)	• February 19, 2010 (United States; limited)  • April 16, 2010 (United Kingdom)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	France Germany United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$45 million
Box office	$15,541,549 (US-Canada) $44,680,749 (rest of world) $60,222,298 (total)

The Ghost Writer (released as The Ghost in the United Kingdom) is a 2010 political thriller film directed by Roman Polanski. The film is an adaptation of the Robert Harris novel, The Ghost, with the screenplay written by Polanski and Harris. It stars Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall and Olivia Williams.

Plot

When a successful English ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) agrees to complete the memoirs of former UK Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his agent, Rick Ricardelli (Jon Bernthal), assures him it is the opportunity of a lifetime. Plus the money is excellent: the publishing company advanced Adam Lang $10 million for his memoirs, and the ghost writer is set to make $250,000. But the project seems doomed from the start, not least because his predecessor on the project, Mike McAra, Lang's long-term aide, died in an apparent accident. The ghost writer flies out to work on the project, in the middle of winter, at an oceanfront estate in the fictional American village of Old Haven (an allusion to Vineyard Haven) on Martha's Vineyard where the former PM is staying with his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), and his personal assistant (and mistress) Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall), along with a staff of servants and security personnel. Forced to work on the estate because he's forbidden from taking the manuscript outside, the ghost writer is checked into a small hotel on the island where he sleeps.

The day after his arrival, a former UK foreign minister named Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh) accuses Lang of authorizing the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists and handing them over for torture by the CIA, a possible war crime. Lang faces the threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court, unless he stays in the U.S. or goes to another country that does not recognize the court's jurisdiction.

The controversy brings reporters and protesters to the security perimeter of the island estate. The ghost writer wakes up to a swarm of media people that have checked into the hotel. To prevent the press from having access to him, the ghost writer is brought to live on the Lang's estate and is put up in McAra's old room with his personal belongings not even cleared out yet. In a PR move aimed at sending the message to the public that everything is as usual, Lang's people quickly schedule some high-profile meetings with top US officials which take Lang and his assistant to Washington. As the ghost writer clears the room, he finds an envelope containing clues suggesting his predecessor may have stumbled on a dark secret concerning Lang. Among the material is a handwritten phone number which the ghost writer calls and discovers it's Richard Rycart's. The ghost writer hangs up without saying a word and doesn't answer when Rycart calls back. During a bicycle ride around the island, as the rain and wind pick up, the writer seeks shelter and meets an old man (Eli Wallach) living nearby, who tells him that there is no possible way the current could have taken McAra's body from the ferry where he disappeared to the beach where it was discovered. The old man also reveals that a neighbor woman saw flashlights on the beach the night the body was discovered, but later fell down her stairs and went into a coma. Continuing his ride, the writer is intercepted by Ruth and her security guard who have gone out to look for him. On the ride back, she clutches the writer's hand as she cries. He doesn't protest, interpreting her emotional outburst to be caused by feeling neglected and abandoned by Lang. Back at the estate, he and Ruth watch the evening news, the leading story being Lang's visit with the vice president in Washington. At the dinner, and later over drinks, they're talking fairly openly. The writer wonders why someone like Lang (handsome skirt-chaser) suddenly decided to go into politics in his early twenties when he never had a political thought in his head up to that point. Ruth admits to being much more political than Lang and says that until lately he always took her advice. The writer tells her what he heard about the body from the villager. She seems very shaken by the news and suddenly rushes out into the rainy night to "clear her head". Upon getting back, distraught and soaked, she confides in the writer that Lang and McAra had a terrible row the night before he died and, while weeping inconsolably, wonders "what has my husband gotten himself into." She and the writer end up sleeping together that night.

The next morning, feeling he's becoming too intimate with his subject, the writer decides to move back to the hotel. He gets into the car used by McAra, but instead of going to the hotel he decides to follow the instructions McAra (we infer) had programmed into the GPS, which leads him off the island to the Belmont estate of Professor Paul Emmetft (Tom Wilkinson), who appears in the University of Cambridge photographs with Lang which had been left behind by McAra. Emmett guardedly lets him into the house, while his wife Nancy in the adjacent room--this is getting creepy--is describing the writer to someone over the phone. During the conversation, Emmett denies anything more than a cursory acquaintance with Lang. What about another photograph of the two of them on the wall of his study? Emmett dismisses it as Lang being kind enough to show up at an event organized by Emmett's organization called Arcadia. The writer then confronts Emmett with the fact that the GPS directions from Lang's estate to Emmett's house were programmed into McAra's car the night he died, but Emmett denies any knowledge and seems evasive as the conversation turns testy. The writer can tell that Emmett is hiding something. As the writer leaves Emmett's estate, he is followed by a car, but eludes it. The writer boards the ferry, but when he sees the car that had followed him drive aboard, he flees the boat as it departs. Deciding to spend the night on the mainland, he checks into a small motel by the ferry dock.

The writer then dials Rycart again, this time staying on the line and introducing himself. Rycart inquires about his whereabouts and tells him to stay put. While waiting for Rycart, he does a Google search on Paul Emmett, finding that in addition to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and geopolitical affairs expert, the professor is linked with the military contractor Hatherton Group through the Arcadia think tank that's focused on Anglo-American relations. He also finds leads that connect Emmett to the CIA as early as 1971 when he graduated from Yale University and was just one of the number of individuals from academia whom CIA recruited for the creation of propaganda material to be used abroad. The writer's computer search is interrupted by a phone call from Ruth who is worried and says she's been contacted by the police after they again found the empty car on the ferry.

Once Rycart arrives, he tells the writer that McAra was the one who supplied him with documents linking Lang to torture flights. The last time they talked McAra also told him about finding something new that he didn't want to talk about over the phone, confiding to him that in case anything happened, the key to explaining everything that had gone wrong in Lang's and Rycart's government was in the beginning of the book. The men cannot, however, find anything in the manuscript's early pages. Then Lang calls and the writer is told by Rycart to go with Lang. The writer warns that Lang will be able to avoid Rycart no matter what he does. On the plane, the writer accuses Lang of being a CIA agent recruited by Emmett, but Lang derides his suggestion.

Upon alighting the aircraft, Lang is assassinated by an anti-war protestor who had lost a son while Lang was the British PM. The assassin is in turn shot by Lang's bodyguards. The writer is questioned by U.S. authorities as the prime witness; they take his passport so that he has to stay and provide information. Despite Lang's death, the writer is asked to complete the book for posthumous publication.

Back in London, during the book launch party, Amelia tells him by accident that the order to have the manuscript accessed by only a few people actually came from the Americans, as the "beginnings" contained evidence that threatened national security. She also tells him that Emmett was Ruth's tutor when she was a Fulbright scholar. He now realizes that the clues were hidden in the original manuscript at the beginning of each chapter. He underlines the words at the beginning of each chapter, which reveal the message: "Lang's wife Ruth was recruited as a CIA agent by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University." Ruth has shaped Lang's every political decision to benefit the United States, as directed by the CIA. The writer rather improbably passes a note to Ruth telling of his discovery and as she unfolds the note, she is devastated. She sees the writer raising his glass, as if making a toast to her and leaving the party with the original manuscript in hand. She starts following him but is stopped by Emmett. As the writer crosses the street off-camera, a car accelerates in his direction, and sound effects and flying papers indicate that he has been hit.

Allusion to Tony Blair

As in the novel, the character of Adam Lang is a veiled portrait of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The BBC notes that the character "was inspired by Tony Blair," and that "the ghost of Tony Blair ... haunts the fictional Mr Lang, with references to Iraq, the 'war on terror', and a much too cosy relationship with the United States."

The actors who play Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart and the US Secretary of State physically resemble their real-life counterparts, Robin Cook and Condoleezza Rice, respectively. Like Rycart, Cook had differences with the direction of the British Prime Minister in some foreign policy matters. The character of the old man living on Martha's Vineyard is an allusion to Robert McNamara.

Cast

• Ewan McGregor as the unnamed Ghost Writer
• Pierce Brosnan as Adam Lang, a former British Prime Minister
• Olivia Williams as Ruth Lang, Adam's wife
• Kim Cattrall as Amelia Bly, Adam's personal assistant
• Timothy Hutton as Sidney Kroll, Lang's American lawyer
• Tom Wilkinson as Paul Emmett, Harvard Law School professor and suspected CIA agent
• Jon Bernthal as Rick Ricardelli, the ghostwriter's agent
• James Belushi as John Maddox, the CEO of the publishing firm publishing Lang's memoirs
• Robert Pugh as Richard Rycart, former British foreign secretary and UN envoy
• Tim Preece as Roy
• David Rintoul as The Stranger
• Eli Wallach as The Old Man at the Vineyard

Production

Polanski had originally teamed with Robert Harris for a film of Harris's novel Pompeii. The film, to be produced by Summit Entertainment, was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 as potentially the most expensive European film ever made, but was cancelled as a result of the looming actors' strike that autumn.

Polanski and Harris then turned to Harris' current bestseller, The Ghost. They co-wrote a script and Polanski announced filming for early 2008, with Nicolas Cage, Pierce Brosnan, Tilda Swinton, and Kim Cattrall starring. The film was then postponed by a year, with Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams replacing Cage and Swinton, respectively.

The film began production in February 2009 in Germany, at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. Germany stood in for London and Martha's Vineyard due to Polanski's inability to legally travel to those places because of an outstanding warrant for him in the United States for fleeing before sentencing after pleading guilty of sexual offenses against a minor. 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 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 in downtown Berlin, 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. 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 February 12, 2010.

Release

The film premiered at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival on February 12, 2010. Summit Entertainment released the home video version on August 3, 2010, on a special "single-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo."

Critical reception

The film has received generally positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 84% of critics gave positive reviews based on a sample of 163 reviews with an average rating of 7.4/10. Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs, gave the film an overall approval rating of seventy-five percent based on twenty-four reviews. Its consensus notes that, "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, which assigns a normalized rating from 0 to 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, gave the film an average rating of seventy-eight percent based on twenty-eight reviews. For Andrew Sarris the film "constitutes a miracle of artistic and psychological resilience." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and declared: "This movie is the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller."

Journalist/blogger William Bradley has 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.

Writing for LAS Magazine, Theon Weber gave the film a 6.8/10 rating and called it "a thriller with topical ambitions; it takes place in a jittery, bomb-fearing Britain and America, often in airports or official buildings, where the weary rituals of security screenings refuse to let the characters or the audience relax."

Funding and political controversy

A sour note came from The Independent's John Rentoul, who describes himself as an "ultra Blairite with a slavish admiration for Tony," and the conservative website Pajamas Media's John Rosenthal, who both pointed out that the winner of Berlin's Silver Bear received a large amount of financial support from the German federal government. Rentoul describes the film as "propaganda" and a "Blair hating movie" and launched a scathing attack on Polanski. They failed to point out, however, that most major films produced in Germany receive a grant from the German Federal Film Fund, which does not need to be repaid (DFFF). The Elfte Babelsberg Film GmbH, for example, received a grant of 3.5 million euros for producing the film. Given that other films may receive German government funding, more clarification about this practice can be found as elaborated by John Rosenthal.

Awards

Main article: List of accolades received by The Ghost Writer

See also

• 2010 in film
• British films of 2010
• List of films set in London
• List of films set in New England
• List of thriller films
• Roman de Gare (France, 2006), by Claude Lelouch (who appears as Hervé Picard), also about a ghost writer.

External links

• theghostwriter-movie.com, film's official website
• The Ghost Writer at AllRovi
• The Ghost Writer at Box Office Mojo
• The Ghost Writer at the Internet Movie Database
• The Ghost Writer at Metacritic
• The Ghost Writer at Rotten Tomatoes