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The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer Former British Prime Minister Alan Lang was found dead on the beach of the island where American policy has been withdrawn. Is therefore recruited a new writer. The matter at stake is not in fact a minor, must complete a biography of Lang, in a time when the controversy about his handling of the war on terrorism came at the height and the international tribunal in The Hague is to open an investigation against him, which could lead to a conviction for crimes against humanity. Lang is in fact suspected of having used unorthodox methods (including torture) have also led to the death of one of the prisoners. The Ghost Writer, however, investigating the lives of Lang, he finds some inconsistent evidence, that suggests the fact that his predecessor was removed after discovering an uncomfortable truth ...

Regardless of the legal proceedings who hit him at the time of the film, Roman Polanski remains an extraordinarily observer polished and a great artist, that with this new masterpiece performs a similar but opposite to that attempted in 1987 with the beautiful Frantic . Once again, in fact, at stake is between a reality and a political reading of Hitchcock's narrative form, which gives rise to a curious mixture noir. If, in fact, thirty years ago, the narrative form towered extremely bitter towards the conclusion of the dynamics of espionage that subjugate the world, this time the political intent is clear and involves the story of a controversial British Prime Minister visibly traced on figure of Tony Blair (here a great Pierce Brosnan) and immersed in a game party and intelligence reports that Polanski also uses narrative as a pretext for staging able to reveal the secrets gradually, with an extraordinary surge in suspense.

Given this premise, therefore, the shape Hitchcock arises in second order with respect to the apparent need for historical-political analysis, but in fact the balance of the parties is more perfect than ever, as each supports the ' other in order to keep alive the attention. Form and substance are found together in a tale so permeated by a constant feeling of unease, but also mocking irony, where the dark-light photography of Pawel Edelman is an effective opposition in the island's open spaces and environments in the residence of apparently aseptic Lang, airy architecture and geometry described by walls, stairs and furniture.

In this space, vaguely Escher, forces acting crazy, which summarizes Polanski in a wonderful way through the details: the slippers out of place under the bed or, more importantly, the gardener who tries to sweep the space behind the leaves home, fighting against a wind that sends everything but the air again. And 'the paradox of an unknowable reality now where, this time in a similar but still different from Frantic, we discovers immersed in an almost Kafkaesque situation (the Ghost Writer is not by chance call to his agent to complain about the situation in which it was made).

Therefore, each character is both an actor in the story, but also a pawn of a higher power: Lang is a political, but also investigated the effect of his wrongdoing and rivalry a colleague who was sacked from the Cabinet of Ministers, his wife is a counselor but also a lover betrayed, his secretary is also in love with him. Demonstrators protesting against Lang instead have their most fervent activist in a former soldier who intends to avenge his son and attacking the Prime Minister, only to get attention, almost to revere a higher authority and invisible.

In this arena, the only person who seems real is the only one without an identity, or the Ghost Writer (played by the great Ewan McGregor) who is not a name, a family, and "there" only by virtue of the work for third parties, that puts the words in books signed by others and that, in summing up the speech, does nothing but follow a path already traced by its predecessor. One scene is emblematic in this sense, is one in which man is guided by the navigator of his car along a route that had not fastened, and that is the writer who had preceded him.

In fact, one of the most magnetic of the film, it is the caliber "object" of the film, in which it appears that the inanimate elements provide much more information and emotions of people in the flesh. Polanski then get an amazing showing the linguistic synthesis of the history progression and determining the tone of the story through the characters' reactions to the actions conveyed by objects. And this from the very 'incipit : The Ghost Writer initial die? We understand the car is left alone in the boat and after we see the corpse. To provide the clues are elements that seem to appear out of nowhere, as the photos found by the protagonist in an envelope stuck in a drawer, the legacy of his predecessor.

And so the final image - and masterfully hitcockiana - the ticket passed from hand to hand with the revelation of truth, is a magic moment in his ability to be absolutely essential and yet so magnificently free, because it excludes the superstructure of a human world, to be understood in its complexity, seems to have to share the details, the small differences that naturally leads to the reality than the plots that seem to obscure always wanting to hide the immanence of truth. What's interesting to Polanski, not surprisingly, is the gray area.

The Ghost Writer

(The Ghost Writer)

Director: Roman Polanski

Screenplay: Roman Polanski and Robert Harris (novel The Ghostwriter, of Robert Harris)

Origin: France / Germany / UK, 2010

Length: 128 '

Interview with Ewan McGregor

Interview with Pierce Brosnan

Interview with Robert Harris

Site Italian

Official site (English)

Card IMDB