"He can't drown two ghostwriters, for god sake. You're not kittens!" Robert Rycart
☆☆☆☆☆ Classic
The Ghost Writer (2010) is an elegant and grand political thriller.
Directed by Roman Polanski.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams among many others.
The Ghost Writer is as much about the craft of filmmaking as it is about the craft of acting. Polanski shows us how to make a Hitchcock style thriller and his cast shows us how to act in an intelligent political drama. Roman adapted Robert Harris novel, The Ghost and helped write the screenplay with Harris.
What is amazing to me is that Polanski was able to finish his film after being put into house arrest by Swiss authorities acting on an arrest warrant in the US dating from 1978. The film takes place mostly in the US, but had to be filmed in Germany's Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, on the island of Sylt in the North Sea, on the ferry MS SyltExpress and on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea to avoid US authorities.
In the scene below I love the way Polanski heightens the drama by having the actors stroll along an empty, cold, windy, cloudy beach, filled with barren sand dunes, while being trailed by an armed guard. I wonder if being under house arrest in his private Swiss Villa, Polanski endured the same kind of confinement the characters in this movie face in their luxurious beachside estate. I'm also drawn to the haunting and eerie music in the scene that Alexandre Desplat crafts.
Trivia - Polanski's daughter Morgane Polanski appears as the hotel clerk at the Inn Ewan is staying at.
Note - If you would like to view The Ghost Writer to rent or buy please click on the link below the comments. It is sponsored by Google, so it is the safest and most secure way to get a copy for your film library.
