The Ghost Writer: Review

Pretty recently, I read, that the most exciting thing about new movies by auteurs is that each release does not stand just for itself but also charts the personal trajectory of the auteurs art. Having watched just one previous movie by Roman Polanski, "Rosemary's Baby", I couldn't have traced any evolutionary arc. However, I could still recognize in it, the elegance, finesse and effortlessness that stems from the cumulative experience of creating everything before.

The movie starts with a young writer being commissioned to be the ghost-writer for an autobiography of a former British Prime-minister. Though initially reluctant, having no political background and also given the fact that his predecessor on the job supossedly committed suicide, the deal is lucrative enough for him to make his way from England to a remote location in the US of A where the former PM now stays with a small number of aides. On his arrival, a political scandal breaks loose. The PM is trying to salvage his image and escape a conviction. His marraige is strained and his wife makes you uncomfortable. In the midst, through a series of convenient, almost naively constructed, circumstances, the writer uncovers secrets his predecessor had found. The movie barely conceals its inspiration: Tony Blair and his wide-eyed acceptance of US tenets. And it also spells out the current world view, where the suppossed perpetrators of all political under-dealings have changed hemishpheres.

Parts of the story, the PM's scandal, the uproar and the possibility of having to stay away from parts of the world in fear of being imprisoned, almost miror Polanski's own drama. And it makes you wonder about coincidence and fate. The movie is the most alive in its carefully crafted grey lansdcape. Everything else, its plots points and its characters, seem incidental in comparison. The beating rain, the fog, the wild sea, the cold sandwiches, the concrete house, the relentless wind, futile attempts at raking leaves. Despite, minimilistic strokes in colors and expression, the landscape makes each frame surge with with story and atmosphere. Each shot is stylized, up to the ending, which though seems to have been created specifically for punch, achieves its objective beautifully. Sheets of flying paper, across a grey urban roadscape. The movie seems made by a master: it is fluent but just a tad careless.