The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, 2010)

[tenia]

I've watched the movie as a movie about the transmission of info, in any way, being with the medias, the phone, or by paper. Thus, I strongly believe that McGregor's character is only the personification of the transmission of information. Once it's done, nobody needs him/it anymore, and it can vanishes.
From my point of view, he's not a character, but almost an object.

[Brian C]

One thing that struck me about the film is that even in the end, we don't really have any idea what's actually happened in an objective sense. I'd have to see it again to know for sure, but I'm not sure there's any reason to believe that what we've seen isn't from the Ghost's perspective, and hence through the filter of his own paranoia. For that matter, I don't remember any concrete reason to believe that the previous writer's death was anything more than the accident it appeared to be.

Perhaps the Ghost has linked a series of his own misconceptions and suspicions into a narrative that has no grounding in reality. Perhaps the note he passes at the end is dead wrong, and produces only bewilderment in its recipient. How do we know otherwise? The movie is filled with implications and what might be called circumstantial evidence but as far as I recall we never actually see anything that would tell us with any certainty whether the Ghost was on to something or simply feeding his own fantasies. Recall, for instance, that

Spoiler

he's mugged before he even leaves England

and arrives at the Lang compound already fearing the worst.

[Cash Flagg]

I'm not sure there's any reason to believe that what we've seen isn't from the Ghost's perspective, and hence through the filter of his own paranoia. For that matter, I don't remember any concrete reason to believe that the previous writer's death was anything more than the accident it appeared to be.

I hadn't thought of the film in those terms until reading your post, but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense.

Spoiler

There is also no definite proof that Lang's assassination wasn't simply the act of a lone gunman. Sure, the shot of his abandoned campsite outside of Lang's compound looks ominous, but that's only because we are viewing it from The Ghost's perspective. There is no actual evidence that the shooter has been manipulated by Lang's wife, or anyone else. After my mother and I left the theater, we were puzzling over The Ghost's sudden cracking of the manuscript's code, which was never properly explained. Perhaps there was no explanation then - he saw what he wanted to see. McGregor wasn't the heroic victim of a shadowy CIA faction, just a hack writer with an overactive imagination who should have looked both ways before crossing the street.

[tenia]

Spoiler

Wow !
Someone actually believed that the father who lost his son was in fact someone paid under the CIA ?

I just thought it was a guy who lost his son and wanted revenge. Not something really complicated.

So you're right, maybe there wasn't, in fact, anything at all linked to CIA ops.

[MoonlitKnight]

A solid thriller; Polanski back in "Frantic" mode here. Not among his best, but certainly not down there with "Pirates" or "The Ninth Gate."

[tartarlamb]

A solid thriller; Polanski back in "Frantic" mode here. Not among his best, but certainly not down there with "Pirates" or "The Ninth Gate."

However much I dread seeing Walter Mathau slipping in shit and eating rats again, Pirates was nowhere near as bad as The Ninth Gate. Ugh.

[Steve Garamond]

Were there any scenes in the whole movie, aside from the very beginning, that didn't have the Ghost present somehow? At least I don't remember any when I come to think of it.

[jorencain]

Were there any scenes in the whole movie, aside from the very beginning, that didn't have the Ghost present somehow? At least I don't remember any when I come to think of it.

You're correct. I just saw this today, and everything is from his perspective.

[colinr0380]

I thought this film was extremely well done, very much like The Ninth Gate in so many ways (particularly in the way that the two main female parts seem similarly matched between the films) and yet it feels like it combines with Chinatown in a manner that increase the ironies.

It's sort of obvious by the title but, as mentioned in the posts above, I saw McGregor's character both as a ghost acting as a kind of witness to these character's lives (that moment where he hears Ruth crying in her bedroom for example. Is it for real – have plans been set in stone behind the other character's backs in a Rosemary’s Baby manner, and her crying is an acknowledgement of Adam’s death now being inevitable? Or is it an act for the writer to overhear?), and he gets used as a means to keep confronting all of these characters with their past, something that they simultaneously seem to want in order to have their version of events elevated and celebrated by the world at large, then to never have to talk about again - this final goal being something which cannot come soon enough.

Compared to Depp's character in the Ninth Gate who is an expert on the books he is searching for, and is treated as such by most characters he meets, McGregor here is almost completely ignorant of the wider implications - and therefore is able to go off on paranoid tangents with the little he does know, perhaps a damning portrayal of how a ghost writer might latch onto an idea as a good hook for their book rather than investigating it properly.

I like the early pans over the words of Lang’s manuscript that take on a kind of monolithic quality, but also the extreme close up causes their meaning to be obscured – we just see the individual words rather than where they fit in the sentences. I thought it was just a visualisation of the ghost getting bleary-eyed while reading through the memoirs on the first viewing but it ties in nicely with the ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ idea, setting up the ending.

By the way I like the way that the film is kind of bookended by two ‘accidents’ in London, something which really adds to the Chinatown atmosphere!

It could be suggested that Adam Lang has become a liability for Ruth in both their professional and personal lives. The affair probably removes Ruth’s feelings of loyalty that might possibly have saved him, if not his career. That leads me to think of Adam as just an actor cast in a role, perhaps barely conscious of why he got to where he did, or that he could have been chosen for the part rather than rising ‘naturally’ through his own efforts. This final period covered by the film seem to show Adam’s awakening to some of the undercurrents of his life before, as in Chinatown, any hope of coming to terms with this new reality is silenced with a bullet.

I also liked the claustrophobic feel to the film – McGregor in the press conference on the disc brought up Cul-de-sac and the isolated castle in that film as being similarly guarded, cut off from the outside world, compound here, but I also found myself thinking a lot about that Liv Ullmann film from the Bergman script, Faithless, which feels like it contains similar qualities of adultery and ghostly inquisition/half hearted atonement.

And I thought the quote from the Robert Harris interview summed up the project perfectly: “All these politicians write these memoirs, but nobody wants to read them”. What better and more secure place to hide a secret code than some place where only a few people will ever encounter it, and which gets revealed in a manner that can easily be dismissed as pure paranoid speculation, or as a literal example of reading between the lines to let the reader interpet the text however they want?

[HistoryProf]

Can anyone who saw this in the theater in the U.S. confirm/deny whether there were a few f-bombs overdubbed with "bloody" and "bugger"!??!? I was quite appalled by the distracting instances of this on the dvd I rented...I honestly can't believe it was done. was getting this a PG-13 rating really going to bring in the teens?

[knives]

I didn't notice any overdubbing, but I do remember there was no fucks and the like.

[cdnchris]

It was obviously dubbed in a couple of close-ups of Pierce, which was distracting. I wasn't surprised to learn that f-bombs were dubbed over after seeing it. Anyone see the Canadian Blu-ray? My understanding is it's not dubbed over and have been thinking about picking that one up.

[mfunk9786]

Can anyone who saw this in the theater in the U.S. confirm/deny whether there were a few f-bombs overdubbed with "bloody" and "bugger"!??!? I was quite appalled by the distracting instances of this on the dvd I rented...I honestly can't believe it was done. was getting this a PG-13 rating really going to bring in the teens?

Polanski is always trying to bring in the teens!

[Forrest Taft]

There was some profanity (Fuck, etc.) when I saw it theatrically here in Norway. Imagine my disappointment when I bought the norwegian blu-ray, only to discover it had the PG-13 soundtrack. Will probably import the Canadian release at some point, or perhaps the UK release (I believe this has the original soundtrack, but I'm not 100% certain).

[MichaelB]

My understanding is that the UK version is indeed the original.

I can certainly confirm that the British theatrical release included the word "cunt" - uttered by the bereaved father at the end of his unsuccessful attempt to get anything useful out of the ghostwriter in the hotel bar.

I vividly remember this because I thought at the time "did he really say that?" - and it turned out to be a verbatim lift from the novel.

[Cefalù]

Can anyone who saw this in the theater in the U.S. confirm/deny whether there were a few f-bombs overdubbed with "bloody" and "bugger"!??!? I was quite appalled by the distracting instances of this on the dvd I rented...I honestly can't believe it was done. was getting this a PG-13 rating really going to bring in the teens?

Polanski is always trying to bring in the teens!

Hahaha!

You know, after seeing The Ghost Writer and its rather savage indictment of the CIA (in a world that hero-worships the Agency in 50+ films/year) I found myself wondering whether the reopening of the Polanski case and the attempts to extradite him in 2009 weren't political and deliberate. He ended up editing the film in jail. The timing was certainly interesting.

[MichaelB]

You know, after seeing The Ghost Writer and its rather savage indictment of the CIA (in a world that hero-worships the Agency in 50+ films/year) I found myself wondering whether the reopening of the Polanski case and the attempts to extradite him in 2009 weren't political and deliberate. He ended up editing the film in jail. The timing was certainly interesting.

But given that the film was completed more or less on schedule, what would the CIA possibly stand to gain from this, especially given the massive extra publicity arising from Polanski's arrest? And why didn't they attempt to nobble Robert Harris, whose book had been a major bestseller for a good couple of years before the film was made?

[cantinflas]

My understanding is that the UK version is indeed the original.

I can certainly confirm that the British theatrical release included the word "cunt" - uttered by the bereaved father at the end of his unsuccessful attempt to get anything useful out of the ghostwriter in the hotel bar.

I vividly remember this because I thought at the time "did he really say that?" - and it turned out to be a verbatim lift from the novel.

I just made an Amazon UK order and completely forgot to get this. So disappointing. One of my favourites of the year.

I can also confirm that the Australian theatrical release included the word "cunt" because I had exactly the same reaction to it as you. It just sort of came out of nowhere. That one word is most likely the only reason it got bumped up to a restricted MA15+ classification instead of an M.

[MoonlitKnight]

My understanding is that the UK version is indeed the original.

I can certainly confirm that the British theatrical release included the word "cunt" - uttered by the bereaved father at the end of his unsuccessful attempt to get anything useful out of the ghostwriter in the hotel bar.

I vividly remember this because I thought at the time "did he really say that?" - and it turned out to be a verbatim lift from the novel.

So he really said that instead of 'arsehole'? I do remember there was something funny about the way he shaped his mouth for that word. :-k I definitely noticed some of the other overdubs the second time I watched it... namely from Olivia Williams' and Pierce Brosnan's characters.

[MichaelB]

The BBFC reports for both the film and video classifications say, in part:

The film has been classified ‘15’ for strong language, once very strong.

BBFC Guidelines at ‘15’ state ‘There may be frequent use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’). The strongest terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable'. The film includes a single use of very strong language and seventeen uses of strong language. The one use of very strong language is directed by one male character at another and lacks the degree of aggression or other aggravating factors that might require an '18'.

It seems pretty clear from that description that they're referring to the scene in the bar, and equally clear that the word they passed was not "arsehole"!

[Clevinger]

On my swedish rental copy Brosnan definitely said "arsehole", but in the subtitles it was translated to (the swedish word for) "cunt"... :-s

I seem to be in the minority, but I wasn't very impressed with the film. Solid but kind of uninspired. A bit predictable sometimes, a bit silly at other times (e.g. the googling of the Emmett-CIA connection).

[MichaelB]

On my Swedish rental copy Brosnan definitely said "arsehole", but in the subtitles it was translated to (the swedish word for) "cunt"

The character who says "cunt" wasn't played by Pierce Brosnan.

[Clevinger]

On my Swedish rental copy Brosnan definitely said "arsehole", but in the subtitles it was translated to (the swedish word for) "cunt"

The character who says "cunt" wasn't played by Pierce Brosnan.

My mistake. I meant the brit (who had lost his son) in the hotel bar. He said it to Brosnan. Definetely...

[RodneyOz]

Actually he said it to Ewan McGregor, because the Ghost was denying he knew where Brosnan was.

[MoonlitKnight]

He wasn't denying it so much as he just wanted to be left alone at that moment. :-"