Andover Film Club

The Ghost

Monday 6th July, 20:15   Reel Cinema, Andover 

Release: 2010 (Cert 15), 128 mins

Directors: Roman Polanski

Review: Here 

Andover Film Club’s final presentation of the season on July 5th before a short summer break gives the local audience the opportunity to see the latest movie from controversial director Roman Polanski.

“The Ghost” (cert 15), released earlier this year, is a political drama starring a host of top-drawer actors, including Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. One critic described it as “a terrific conspiracy thriller in the Hitchcock mode”. Although the film is based on a fictional novel of the same name, the former Prime Minister at the centre of the story is clearly inspired by Tony Blair and his handling of the “war on terror”.

The presentation will start at 8.15pm and as ever the film is open to the public as well as club members. 

Introduction Given On The Night, By Sue Mowforth

The Ghost is a political thriller based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris who is a political editor, journalist and novelist (who lives not far from here). Harris was an initial supporter of New Labour until Tony Blair took this country into the Iraq War. The book is a thinly veiled outraged expose of the role that Tony Blair took in following Bush into Iraq. You can tell from Harris’s other works that he is interested in the role that individual people play in the sweep of history, and in this case knowing the politicians and public characters both professionally and socially, he’s well placed to comment. How much of the storyline is true and how much is fantasy we may never know. When the novel came out The New York Observer commented that the book’s "shock-horror revelation" was "so shocking it simply can’t be true, though if it were it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain."

Although the book (and the film in this country) is titled ‘The Ghost‘, the film was released in the US as The Ghost Writer. The story is certainly about a ‘ghost-writer who is hired to ghost-write or re-hack the memoirs of a recently unseated British Prime Minister. The timing of the film’s release in February this year, so soon after the Chilcot Enquiry means that the story and the characters are still very fresh in our minds. Harris and Polanski co-wrote the screen play. The film version of the book is watered down in its direct references to the dirtier aspects to our support for Bush’s campaign, the plot is tightened up and the ending is changed to give it much more action.

The story is set on the wintry coastline of America’s Martha’s Vineyard. Roman Polanski shoots much of the action on a bleak rain-soaked stretch of the North German Coast which brilliantly re-creates the same chilly brooding atmosphere. Polanski’s trademark is building tension and suspense. (Have any of you seen some of his early works, such as Knife in the Water, or Repulsion?). In this film Polanski uses the house where our ex PM and his wife are holed-up as a metaphor for the coldness of its inhabitants and their isolated doom. Although ostensibly it is an opulent mansion, Polanski creates an atmosphere of disconnect and bleakness and the house develops the airtight charm of a mausoleum.

The ex-PM, Adam Lang, is played by the ever-smooth Pierce Brosnan. It’s fascinating to watch how Brosnan plays the Blair-like character. Apparently, he and Polanski decided early on that he wasn’t going to do an impersonation of Blair - but there was going to be an echo, an essence. Brosnan looked at Blair and he also interestingly looked at Cameron and listened to their tapes to get an interpretation of the character. What he has tried to catch is the mixture of matey-ness and sincerity. He says the way they both achieve ‘sincerity’ is brilliant!`

The ghostwriter (who’s name we never learn in the film) is played by Ewan McGregor, Scotland’s most famous export since Sean Connery - you may remember him from Moulin Rouge, Black Hawk Down, Trainspotting and of course Star Wars.

Is this film one of Polanski’s greatest? The reviews have been mixed. His previous films have all been heavy, described as profoundly pessimistic, exploring the psychological dynamics and moral consequences of status envy and sexual jealousy.

Not surprising considering that his life has endured some pretty turbulent experiences. His (nominally Jewish) father survived an Austrian concentration camp but his mother died in Auschwitz. Roman escaped from the Krakow ghetto in 1943 and spent the rest of the war as a Jewish boy in hiding behaving outwardly as a Roman Catholic. Not an easy childhood then. Later in life he was profoundly effected by the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate in 1969. That proved to be a monumental watershed in his life leaving him with a feeling of (in his own words) “ingrained pessimism ... eternal dissatisfaction with life“. Mind you, even his first films were described as dark and unsettling.

In 1977 Polanski was arrested in America and charged with raping a 13 year old girl and fled to France. Then in September last year he was unexpectedly taken into custody at Zurich airport on his way to collect a life-time achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. He was granted house arrest whilst waiting decision of appeals and it was under these circumstances that he completed the editing of this film. As I said - not an easy life then!

You’ll have to decide if its one of his best or not. The film has certainly had mixed reviews. The bulk of the criticism has (perhaps not surprisingly) come from America. Some commentators have found the political parallels a bit patronising and, depending on your point of view, somewhat offensive, although the book is certainly much closer than the film to direct criticism of the Blair government with its ’extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and No 10’s general kowtowing to Washington’. These are hardly mentioned in the film. The film has also received some negative comments on the pace of the plot and the energy of the characters which seem to drift a bit in the middle. Maybe this is just Polanski’s way of building up a sinister ghostly atmosphere. The ending is typically bleak and pessimistic. But then, you are probably expecting that. And there has also been a bit of sniggering about some of the actors’ accents.

They used to say that history was written by the victors. In this age of the internet it is increasingly being written by the losers as well. I wonder what interpretation the future will put on the Blair years and whether The Ghost will have any impact on how this whole Iraq episode will be remembered.