The Ghost (15.)
Directed by Roman Polanski.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Olivia Williams, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton. 128 mins
The subject of Polanski’s latest film is a widely reviled man who spends a lot of time sitting at home feeling hard done by.
Pierce Brosnan is Adam Lang, and Adam Lang is Tony Blair, a former PM now holed up in a bunker on a little island off Cape Cod, struggling to complete his memoirs. The previous ghost writer has unfortunately taken a drunken tumble off the ferry so low class hack (McGregor and an army of glottal stops) is flown over to jazz up the lengthy and tedious book and get it ready for publication in a month. Progress though is hindered by the breaking news that Lang is to be indicted for war crimes in The Hague.
With a deadline that tight you’d expect him to get cracking straight away, scribbling away with barely a break for tea. Even when Lang has to fly off to deal with his troubles you’d expect the writer to have more pressing things to do than sit around the house, chatting and wandering off to investigate the death of his predecessor. Of course, if he had actually done any writing he wouldn’t have stumbled upon the secrets that threaten his life and we wouldn’t have much of a plot.
Brosnan’s role is sadly little more than a cameo but McGregor is actually engaging in the main role though that that estuary English never stops being irritating.
The film’s great distinguishing mark is its location. Polanski shots the film under grey heavy skies. A bleak forlorn German coast on the North Sea was used to stand in for the actual location in Martha’s Vineyard and by the magic of cinema it has been made to resemble a bleak forlorn Germany coast on the North Sea
Now I rather like films with windswept ferry journeys in out of season holiday locations, but most audiences will wonder why on earth a former PM would chose to in hole up in a bunker that looks like it could withstand nuclear assault in a location so bleak it would make you home sick for Dungeness.
Given the severity of the visuals, the subject matter and the talent attached, you might expect The Ghost to be a serious, thoughtful piece but this adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel is really just a page turner made flesh. It’s a light, engaging, slightly silly bit of hokum. It could perhaps have been more if either writer or director had come up with some dialogue that was anything more than functional but when you have a group of supposedly intelligent powerful people talking in cliché and blanditries than you know that the story is the only thing to concentrate on. But as hokum it is enjoyable.
Directed by Roman Polanski.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Olivia Williams, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton. 128 mins
The subject of Polanski’s latest film is a widely reviled man who spends a lot of time sitting at home feeling hard done by.
Pierce Brosnan is Adam Lang, and Adam Lang is Tony Blair, a former PM now holed up in a bunker on a little island off Cape Cod, struggling to complete his memoirs. The previous ghost writer has unfortunately taken a drunken tumble off the ferry so low class hack (McGregor and an army of glottal stops) is flown over to jazz up the lengthy and tedious book and get it ready for publication in a month. Progress though is hindered by the breaking news that Lang is to be indicted for war crimes in The Hague.
With a deadline that tight you’d expect him to get cracking straight away, scribbling away with barely a break for tea. Even when Lang has to fly off to deal with his troubles you’d expect the writer to have more pressing things to do than sit around the house, chatting and wandering off to investigate the death of his predecessor. Of course, if he had actually done any writing he wouldn’t have stumbled upon the secrets that threaten his life and we wouldn’t have much of a plot.
Brosnan’s role is sadly little more than a cameo but McGregor is actually engaging in the main role though that that estuary English never stops being irritating.
The film’s great distinguishing mark is its location. Polanski shots the film under grey heavy skies. A bleak forlorn German coast on the North Sea was used to stand in for the actual location in Martha’s Vineyard and by the magic of cinema it has been made to resemble a bleak forlorn Germany coast on the North Sea
Now I rather like films with windswept ferry journeys in out of season holiday locations, but most audiences will wonder why on earth a former PM would chose to in hole up in a bunker that looks like it could withstand nuclear assault in a location so bleak it would make you home sick for Dungeness.
Given the severity of the visuals, the subject matter and the talent attached, you might expect The Ghost to be a serious, thoughtful piece but this adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel is really just a page turner made flesh. It’s a light, engaging, slightly silly bit of hokum. It could perhaps have been more if either writer or director had come up with some dialogue that was anything more than functional but when you have a group of supposedly intelligent powerful people talking in cliché and blanditries than you know that the story is the only thing to concentrate on. But as hokum it is enjoyable.
