I'm not sure Smith is off on that. There was a bit of the madonna/whore cliche going on with Cattrall and Williams. Polanski is a womanizer, there's no doubt. But he does have an ear for their individual voices, gives them their due in his stories, and in this respect, at least (meaning onscreen), treats them with far more respect than most of his peers do. REPULSION, CUL-DE-SAC, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and TESS attest to that.
Finally got around to seeing this film a few days ago (on a flight back from Italy, of all places!). Excellent writeup as usual and nice insight about the major female characters in this film ad the ghost writer's relationship with them. I didn't catch that at first, but that's because of the beauty of the narrative as well as Polanski's direction.
Did you note the over the shoulder camera work as the ghost writer heads to the ferry after the visit to Professor Emmet's house? Very reminiscent of a few scenes in Chinatown.
I am not sure we should so easily draw parallels between Polanski's films and his life, even if they seem to be obvious: both his work and destiny are way too complex for something as bland as direct analogy. The only analogy I see is, like in The Tenant (or any other Polanski film, in fact), we see a living soul trying to break the wall the hostile unknowable world has built around it, thus, yes, there is some similarity between The Ghost (not Adam Lang) and his creator.
I followed the link you provided for the unfortunate 1977 case, and found the same old set of allegations there (in both the article and, especially, the comments) that can be found all over the Net: child molestation, rape, flight from justice etc. I understand people can't be expected to be as obsessed with this case as I am, and to spend part of their life on researching it; I've been doing it for months, studying all existing materials, and I dearly hope my findings will hope to shed some light on what really happened: this is, truly, a famous case nobody really knows.
http://polanski-oddmanout.blogspot.com/
March 28, 2011 at 8:03 AM
by Tony Dayoub
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In The Ghost Writer, the British Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a former prime minister under attack for playing crony to the U.S. and its interests in the Iraq War, is beset by protesters who attack him for aiding and abetting the torture of Muslim POWs. While contending with the suspicious death of writer Mike McAra who was ghosting his memoirs, Lang rides out the tempest in Cape Cod with his wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams); his assistant and possible mistress, Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall); and new to the mix, the unnamed ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) who replaces McAra.
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On the face of it, director Roman Polanski's latest film is a suspense thriller in which Lang stands in for the beleaguered British ex-PM Tony Blair. Recently, Blair has faced his own troubles in England concerning his participation in the Iraq War, defending his actions against protesters over there. But as this film entered post-production, Polanski's own troubles (his flight from the U.S. after being tried for statutory rape) came back to haunt him. Jailed in Switzerland while awaiting possible extradition, he finished editing the film in prison. It is unavoidable to identify Polanski with the character of Lang, especially in scenes where Lang is holed up in a fortress-like compound a bit out of place on the quaint New England isle. One even feels the parallel more acutely in a scene late in the film when Lang disembarks his private jet at an airport only to be faced with a large gathering of screaming picketers, moreso because the shot is almost from a POV angle just behind Brosnan's back. But wait a second, it is a POV shot from the perspective of the movie's actual protagonist, the Ghost (as I'll call him here). Could it be that Polanski not only finds easy identification with Lang, but a more complex one with McGregor's Ghost?
You see while it is rather simple to draw the parallel with Lang—rich guy with a weakness for women who has to seclude himself far from home to avoid a public trial—it is also rather evident the Ghost represents a younger version of Polanski: the young, commercially driven artist who may have sown the seeds of his own destruction when he sold out to the mainstream. Had Polanski resisted giving in to the temptations a career in Hollywood afforded him, would he have skipped the tragedy of Sharon Tate's murder or the alleged rape he is accused of? The Ghost is conflicted with his new assignment, churning out a rewrite of a rather prosaic author's work, subjecting himself to shorter and shorter deadlines set by a sleazy boss (a wonderful cameo by a bald Jim Belushi), yet still trying to maintain an ethical distance from his subject. A lot of lip service is paid to ethics at least, but the Ghost still hits on the sexy Amelia quite aggressively, and drops his pants for the wickedly intelligent Ruth pretty quickly, a proclivity shared by the director. Is this Polanski the younger punishing Polanski the elder for his indiscretions?
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It is no surprise then that Robert Harris' original potboiler, The Ghost found such a receptive audience in Polanski, and why Polanski's own life experiences have deepened the subtext of the film. The plot is a bit of wish fulfillment for the bedeviled director who here displays a black sense of humor about his current circumstance. Not only does he make Lang a bit of a pompous cad, a former actor who got into the game simply to meet more women; he makes the Ghost a writer idealistic enough to want to bring the complicated truth about the ex-PM to light, yet morally compromised enough to enjoy the creature comforts of staying at the PM's household in his absence despite whatever distance he claims he wants to keep.
The Ghost Writer's ultimate joke is the way Polanski doles out punishment to both of his alter egos. Lang's undoing is not entirely unexpected in the way it is depicted. But the cocky Ghost gets his, too, in a quite acerbically witty way which ties into the writer's smugness. In this way, The Ghost Writer acknowledges the director's own complicity in perpetuating an image which has unfortunately contributed to his present dilemma.
"Movie Review: The Ghost Writer (2010)"
4 Comments -
This comment has been removed by the author.
April 22, 2010 at 5:39 PM
I'm not sure Smith is off on that. There was a bit of the madonna/whore cliche going on with Cattrall and Williams. Polanski is a womanizer, there's no doubt. But he does have an ear for their individual voices, gives them their due in his stories, and in this respect, at least (meaning onscreen), treats them with far more respect than most of his peers do. REPULSION, CUL-DE-SAC, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and TESS attest to that.
April 24, 2010 at 9:43 AM
Tony:
Finally got around to seeing this film a few days ago (on a flight back from Italy, of all places!). Excellent writeup as usual and nice insight about the major female characters in this film ad the ghost writer's relationship with them. I didn't catch that at first, but that's because of the beauty of the narrative as well as Polanski's direction.
Did you note the over the shoulder camera work as the ghost writer heads to the ferry after the visit to Professor Emmet's house? Very reminiscent of a few scenes in Chinatown.
June 18, 2010 at 6:45 PM
I am not sure we should so easily draw parallels between Polanski's films and his life, even if they seem to be obvious: both his work and destiny are way too complex for something as bland as direct analogy. The only analogy I see is, like in The Tenant (or any other Polanski film, in fact), we see a living soul trying to break the wall the hostile unknowable world has built around it, thus, yes, there is some similarity between The Ghost (not Adam Lang) and his creator.
I followed the link you provided for the unfortunate 1977 case, and found the same old set of allegations there (in both the article and, especially, the comments) that can be found all over the Net: child molestation, rape, flight from justice etc. I understand people can't be expected to be as obsessed with this case as I am, and to spend part of their life on researching it; I've been doing it for months, studying all existing materials, and I dearly hope my findings will hope to shed some light on what really happened: this is, truly, a famous case nobody really knows.
http://polanski-oddmanout.blogspot.com/
March 28, 2011 at 8:03 AM