Fridae

Already a septuagenarian, Roman Polanski’s directorial career looks like it could very well end with this film. As an experimental take on the political thriller, The Ghost Writer may well be overshadowed by the unqualified successes like Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist, Bitter Moon, and your mileage will vary depending on how you like your thrillers done.

The experiment by Polanski and novelist Robert Harris combines one part roman a clef and two parts revenge fantasy into The Ghost Writer. The conspiracy theory hinges on a thinly veiled stand-in for former UK PM Tony Blair, played by Pierce Brosnan. The thriller involves the question of whether this alternate reality Tony Blair was guilty of abetting the US war on terror and facilitating its campaign of probably illegal extraordinary renditions. The revenge fantasy of this film is to see Tony Blair’s political legacy discredited, repudiated, and ruined.

Given its premise, there is as much thriller in The Ghost Writer as there was mystery or thriller in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. Thrillers traditionally depend on mysteries and secrets, and for a film with such a huge axe to grind with real-life politicians, there aren’t many surprises or shocks that Polanski and Harris could serve, especially if you know their political leanings.

The compensation for this minor flaw is a smaller murder mystery wrapped in the wider political thriller. The former PM’s ghost writer for his autobiography passed away under mysterious circumstances and Ewan McGregor, as the new ghost writer, will stumble and solve the mystery as well as the political conspiracy behind it. A very strong performance by the supporting cast helps create an atmosphere of unease and paranoia, which more than compensates for its weak thriller aspect.

If The Ghost Writer was an experiment to see if a political thriller could work as a revenge fantasy and roman a clef at the same time, I am pleased to report that the film handles both parts equally well, at least up to the final scenes. What made this film worth it for me was its political revenge part: it’s satisfying to see Robin Cook triumph over Blair, even in fiction.