The Case for Being Touched by a Barge Polanski

Finally, I have seen a movie at the Lighthouse Pauatahanui, the last (I think) cinema in the region at which I had to see a film. It is a bit out of the way, and the movies shown there tend to be an odd mix of family friendly stuff that I would rather see on the BIG screen, or else more (but not too) arthouse fare. It was for the latter that the effort was made, for the Roman Polanski film Ghost Writer.

NotKate has already described this somewhat, but I will add my own few cents worth here.

The film itself is really bleak, cloudy, windy and depressing. That depression is not assisted much by any of the sets (the main house is a harsh concrete prison block of a modern lego mansion) nor by the actors themselves. Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall are all on their most serious behaviour (Cattrall's quasi-British accent fluctuating wildly, I thought), but Olivia Williams manages to rise above the overwhelming glumness to deliver a captivating performance, though my fondness for her might be influenced by the fact I adored her as Adele on Dollhouse. There are also some fairly superfluous "odd domestics" characters, apparently in the film to provide light relief. I say "apparently", as the humour is painful and obvious, and, as their inclusion is almost irrelevant to the plot, just ends up making Polanski look like a bit of racist to add to his already extensive list of "-ists".

And what is going on? Briefly, it's "what if Tony Blair" type story, with Brosnan as former PM Lang, whose role in a foreign invasion is called into question around the time that his memoirs are being written with the assistance of a Ghost (McGregor). As War Crimes allegations are levelled against him, he finds he is forced to stay in the USA to avoid extradition to the War Crimes Tribunal. The parallel between this and Polanski's own "exile" to France to avoid extradition is interesting and I couldn't help wonder if (I shall try and be obscure here to avoid giving away anything) "how things end" is a reflection of how Polanski feels he should or will be treated.

Anyway, as the Ghost, McGregor gets involved in trying to ferret out the truth of the allegations, and as soon as he goes off on his own, I found myself beginning to nod off. His detective work is slow, dull and, in some cases (and as NotKate has pointed out) more than a little dumb. There is not so much investigation as discovery, coincidence piling on coincidence to get to the final reveal of the underlying truth - and, in the end, that truth had me less scratching my head in puzzlement and more throwing spoons at the screen, crying, "how is this relevant!?!" It's not so much that the ending makes no sense, it's more that... well, I didn't really care (as its nothing really to do with the war crimes)? This great letdown is then followed up with a ridiculously lazy ending that again was spoon worthy and had me rooting for the bad guys because, as the great Dark Helmet once said, "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb".

Unfortunately, had I had any plastic spoons in the cinema, I would have wasted my culinary ammunition on one of the more rowdy members of the audience. Before the film settled into its underwhelming middle and pathetic end, the odd moment of levity had one half crazed movie goer barking in laughter in a way that indicated she may have sat through the tedium before. It could be that this woman was a caution that multiple viewings of this film (for anything other than Williams' performance) would cause brain damage, so I will heed this implicit warning and stay away from re-watching this any time soon.

Verdict: From the above, the rating for the Ghost Writer has to be low. On the plus side, the film is well shot and well acted and occasionally amusing. On the bad side, it is deathly slow and seems to be written for terminally stupid people, and I, for one, don't really appreciate that kind of things in my thrillers. 3 Caspers out of 10.