Roman Polanski: “Whatever, haters. I’ma do me.” (A review of “Ghost Writer”)
SPOILER ALERT - By the end of this post, I will have totally ruined the ending of this movie.
Anyone who has been lucky enough to sit through a successful long-form improv set will tell you; few theater experiences can measure up to the satisfaction of predicting a move, moments before a performer nails it in the scene. It’s a big ol’ back scratch for the intellect, to feel that are you engaged in the performance enough to be on the exact same page as the players (possibly even ahead of them, which can happen as often as not…). Now imagine that feeling, but instead of the immediate satisfaction of having your predictions realized on stage, that pleasure coming 30+ minutes after you first suspect that you “know something.” That’s what it felt like to watch “Ghost Writer.” In this case, the main prediction was that the main character, Ewan MacGregor was going to be dead by the end. Granted, this fact was overly-foreshadowed throughout the film. But what made it so satisfying is the simple fact that it happened. And in such straightforward way.
The main character (MacGregor) is a ghost writer, working with a former British Prime-minister (Pierce Brosnan, whose every detail smacks of Tony Blair) to complete his memoirs. The writer who was previously working on the book washed up dead on the beach. So the new guy comes in to pick up where the dead guy left off. At first glance, the pre-existing first draft is a piece of garbage. But we follow along with “the ghost” as he discovers that there is something very ominous hidden within the crappy pages of the exhaustively-researched memoirs. Meanwhile, the former PM faces allegations of war crimes (overseeing the secret capture and torture of terror suspects, which we find out was done in cooperation with the CIA). So the PM goes off a mini-publicity tour to mellow the bad press, and leaves Ewan MacGregor free to snoop around his house (and fuck his wife, who turns out to be working for the CIA herself).
Polanski is old school, and this is an old school kind of movie. The suspense comes not from typically-over-acted scenes of people yelling at each other, then being interrupted by gratuitous missile fire, but more from just watching one man be alone for most of the film, with information that he is not supposed to have. Of course, he gets in too deep, and gets himself in some serious shit - and, of course, the question becomes “will he be able to get out of it?” The answer is no…Well, sort of yes and no…Eventually, he unravels the mystery of the PM’s past, and his involvement with the CIA/secret torture war crimes…But that happens about 3 minutes before he is hit by a car and dies in the last scene of the film.
Polanski gives us a protagonist, who lacks a tangible past and is charged with a totally neutral emotional/moral disposition. We don’t care about him. He sucks as a main character. But we follow him. Not because he is interesting, but because Polanski is so deliberate in showing us why what we are seeing is important. He doesn’t try to get the audience on the side of the main character, or feign what would be a totally irrelevant personal history. But through the cinematography, and pace of the film, he gives us reason from the very beginning to pay attention. And the film is honest about it’s conceits - that’s exactly what MacGregor’s character was. He’s Jake Gittes without a personality, and no stakes to whether or not he, or anyone he cares about, lives or dies by the end of the film. I didn’t care. About half way through, I made the realization of how totally unimportant the main character was, and that he was certainly going to be dead at the end of the film. We sit for over two hours, as Brosnan and MacGregor’s stories slowly play out…and then within the last 10 minutes, both of their characters are dead (bullet to the head, and sedan, respectively). Predictable? Yes. Satisfying? Absolutely. It was exactly what it told us it would be. And that notion I came across halfway through (along with miniature versions throughout the film), was totally paid off.
The film played directly to the audience in a really unique way. Not by making us fall in love with a hero, or hating a villain, or rooting for someone and their love interest to hook up, and then paying those things off in the end - we don’t really care about the hero or the villain (arguably Brosnan, though Polanski makes no effort to indicate his position on any of the moral questions posed by the film), and the only love story is an obligatory one-nighter between the writer and the PM’s wife. Instead, the film said “none of these things are important, because you already know what is going to happen.” And then they happened. Maybe I was the only one in the audience who was pumped to see both main characters offed in the last minutes of the film (it was me, alone, with about 5-7 strangers. what kind of odds does that give me?). But I was really happy things happened the way they did. I felt like the kid in class who knew the answer before the teacher asked the question. And that’s what I think Polanski was going for. Heavy on form, light (though relevant) on content, and nailed it. So I say good for him for making films the way he knows how to. Maybe he can pick a better story next time, but who knows, maybe that’s not what he is looking for.
