Much has been made of how Pierce Brosnan’s character in The Ghost Writer is a blatant stand-in for Tony Blair. Co-screenwriter Robert Harris (who also penned the novel The Ghost that the film is based on) was a former Blair supporter who became disillusioned with the prime minister’s enthusiasm for the Iraq War. Harris paints a sort of a wish-fulfillment scenario, where Adam Lang (Brosnan) is forced to account for his alleged war crimes, both through a formal trial at the Hague and by protesters congregating at the end of his private drive. Harris also constructs an elaborate conspiracy to explicate how the United Kingdom got pulled into Iraq. After all, when someone you trust betrays you, it’s easier to believe that his hand was forced, not that he simply made a decision you didn’t agree with.
As much as The Ghost Writer can be read as reflecting Harris’s real-life experiences, though, the movie is just as much a product of director and co-writer Roman Polanski. Polanski, probably the most controversial filmmaker whose films aren’t particularly controversial, is one of the last of his generation of auteurs who can still make movies that are both commercially successful and deeply personal. At first blush, a film about a former British prime minister and his ghostwriter seems to have little to do with the Polish director’s checkered history. But Lang and Polanski are both great men in exile, neither of whom quite comprehends the accusations against him. Both have supporters too eager to give them a pass for their crimes, and detractors who refuse to see their good points. Polanski, arrested after leaving the safe haven of France, edited The Ghost Writer while under house arrest in Switzerland. And while Lang isn’t formally accused of a crime until well into the movie, he has nevertheless spent his post-ministerial days in a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. The US, not so coincidentally, doesn’t extradite people accused by the International Criminal Court.
Polanski gives the film an unusual flat appearance to emphasize the claustrophobia and paranoia of living in a mansion with all modern conveniences, except for real freedom. Yet that distinctive look is also the product of a necessary process, in which the director used green screens to substitute for Massachusetts and London, places where he couldn’t set foot without being arrested. But does The Ghost Writer have anything to say about Polanski’s mental state as a fugitive convict? I’m hesitant to play armchair (or movie theater seat) psychiatrist. I’ll note only that Lang seems to think of himself as an innocent man – not because he didn’t do the things he was accused of doing, but because he doesn’t see them as crimes. I’d have trouble believing Polanski didn’t intend the audience to recognize some shared ground between him and Lang. After all, a major plot twist in The Ghost Writer hinges on Ewan MacGregor’s character discovering a secret message that’s been in his hands the whole time. All he had to do was read in between the lines.
Look, Sally, Look 