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The Ghost Writer (film)
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Wikipedia article
'The Ghost Writer' (released as 'The Ghost' in the United Kingdom and Ireland)[https://archive.today/20120903163937/http://www.movies.ie/articles/free_preview_screening__the_ghost Movies.ie 6 April 2010: "Free Preview Screening the Ghost in Dublin"]. Retrieved 30 January 2012 is a 2010 neo-noir political thriller film directed by Roman Polanski. The film is an adaptation of a 2007 Robert Harris novel, 'The Ghost', with the screenplay written by Polanski and Harris. It stars Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, and Olivia Williams.
The film was a critical and commercial success and won numerous cinematic awards including Best Director for Polanski at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival and also at the 23rd European Film Awards in 2010.
Plot
A ghostwriter is hired by the publishing firm Rhinehart, Inc. to complete the autobiography of the former British Prime Minister Adam Lang. The ghostwriters predecessor and Lang's aide, Mike McAra, has recently died in a drowning accident. The ghostwriter travels to Old Haven on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where Lang and his wife Ruth are staying with Lang's aides, including Amelia Bly. Originally staying at a hotel, the ghostwriter is relocated to Lang's estate when the media descend on the island after learning of Lang's presence there.
The former British Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart accuses Lang of authorizing the forcible abduction of suspected terrorists, a possible war crime. Lang faces prosecution by the International Criminal Court unless he stays in the United States (which doesn't recognize the ICC's jurisdiction). While Lang is in Washington, DC, the ICC announce the beginning of an investigation into the accusations. The ghostwriter finds an envelope containing photographs and a phone number in McAra's old room. The ghostwriter calls the number and discovers that it belongs to Rycart. While out cycling in the rain, the ghostwriter speaks to a local elderly man and learns that the current could not have carried McAra's body to the site on the beach at which it was found, which indicates that someone planted the body there; a local woman saw flashlights on the beach on the night it was found but she later fell down the stairs and is now in a coma.
Ruth and the ghostwriter have dinner together while Lang is away and the ghostwriter explains his discoveries about McAra. That alarms Ruth, who rushes outside to clear her head. When she returns, she tells him that Lang and McAra argued the night before his death over something. Ruth and the ghostwriter have a one-night stand.
The ghostwriter takes McAra's car with the intent of returning to his hotel, but he follows the pre-programmed directions on the car's sat nav instead. The car takes the ghostwriter to the Belmont, Massachusetts home of Professor Paul Emmett.
Emmett denies anything more than a cursory acquaintance with Lang, despite several pictures of the pair together. When the ghostwriter tells Emmett the sat nav proves that McAra visited him the night he died, Emmett denies meeting McAra and becomes evasive.
Someone follows the ghostwriter on the way back to Marthas Vineyard, and he tries to escape on the ferry. When they follow him onto the ferry, he jumps off as it is leaving the dock and checks into a nearby hotel. With no one else to turn to, the ghostwriter asks Rycart for help. The ghostwriter researches links between Emmett and a military contractor as well as the CIA. Rycart reveals that McAra gave him documents linking Lang to so-called "torture flights" in which terrorist suspects were placed on private jets to be tortured while airborne.
Rycart claims that McAra found new evidence, which he wrote about in "the beginning" of the manuscript. The men cannot, however, find anything in the early pages. The ghostwriter discusses Emmett's relationship with Lang, and Rycart recounts how Lang's decisions as Prime Minister uniformly benefited US interests.
The ghostwriter is contacted by Lang, who is returning from Washington on his private jet and offers him a lift, which Rycart insists he accept to avoid suspicion. Armed with the evidence, the ghostwriter confronts Lang and accuses him of being a CIA agent recruited by Emmett, which Lang angrily denies. When the plane lands, Lang is assassinated by a man armed with a rifle - he had a son who died "in one of Lang's illegal wars." The assassin is shot dead by Lang's bodyguards. The ghostwriter is asked to complete the book for posthumous publication.
At the book's launch party in London, the ghostwriter learns from Amelia that Emmett, who is in attendance, was Ruth's tutor when she was at Harvard University. Whilst going through the original manuscript, he learns that it was suspected of being a security risk and that the truth was in "the beginnings". Going through the manuscript in a back room, the ghostwriter discovers that McAra wrote the truth by using the first few words of each of the first few chapters, which spell out, "Lang's wife Ruth was recruited as a CIA agent by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University." He concludes that Ruth ensured that every decision Lang made as Prime Minister directly benefited the US. The ghostwriter passes a note to Ruth that reveals his discovery. She unfolds the note and is devastated. She sees the ghostwriter raising a glass to her. The ghostwriter leaves the party and Ruth tries to follow him, but Emmett stops her. As the ghostwriter crosses the street a car accelerates in his direction, and a thud is heard. Witnesses react in horror, and the pages containing McAra's manuscript scatter in the wind.
Cast
* Ewan McGregor as the Ghost, the unnamed ghostwriter
* Pierce Brosnan as Adam Lang, a former British Prime Minister
* Kim Cattrall as Amelia Bly, Lang's personal assistant
* Olivia Williams as Ruth Lang, Lang's wife
* Tom Wilkinson as Paul Emmett, a professor at Harvard Law School
* Timothy Hutton as Sidney Kroll, Lang's American lawyer
* Jon Bernthal as Rick Ricardelli, the ghostwriter's agent
* Tim Preece as Roy, managing director of Rhinehart's London business
* Robert Pugh as Richard Rycart, UN Envoy and former British foreign secretary
* David Rintoul as the Stranger, a grieving father who lost his son during the War in Afghanistan
* Eli Wallach as the Old Man at Martha's Vineyard
In addition, James Belushi plays John Maddox, Rhinehart's New York executive.
Production
Polanski had originally teamed with Robert Harris for a film of Harris's novel 'Pompeii', but the project was cancelled because of the looming actors' strike that autumn.[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/1670046/roman_polanski_flees_pompeii/ Rotten Tomatoes 12 September 2007: Roman Polanski Flees Pompeii]. Retrieved 30 January 2012
Polanski and Harris then turned to Harris' current best seller, 'The Ghost'. They co-wrote a script and in November 2007, just after the book's release, Polanski announced filming for autumn 2008. In June 2008, Nicolas Cage, Pierce Brosnan, Tilda Swinton, and Kim Cattrall were announced as the stars. Production was then postponed by a number of months, with Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams replacing Cage and Swinton, respectively, as a result.
The film finally began production in February 2009 in Germany, at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. Germany stood in for London and Martha's Vineyard due to Polanski's inability to legally travel to those places, as Polanski had fled the U.S. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. The majority of exteriors, set on Martha's Vineyard, were shot on the island of Sylt in the North Sea, and on the ferry MS 'SyltExpress'. The harbor exterior were shot on both the German island of Sylt, and the Danish island of Rm. The exterior set of the house where much of the film takes place, however, was built on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea. Exteriors and interiors set at a publishing house in London were shot at Charlottenstrasse 47 in downtown Berlin (Mitte), while Strausberg Airport near Berlin stood in for the Vineyard airport.Database (undated). [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139328/locations "Filming Locations for The Ghost Writer (2010)"]. 'Internet Movie Database'. Retrieved 5 March 2011. A few brief exterior shots for driving scenes were shot by a second unit in Massachusetts, without Polanski or the actors.The end credits list Wellfleet, Provincetown and Bourne, Massachusetts
On his way to the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski was arrested by Swiss police in September 2009 at the request of the US and held for extradition on a 1978 arrest warrant. Due to Polanski's arrest, post-production was briefly put on hold, but he resumed and completed work from house arrest at his Swiss villa. He was unable to participate in the film's world premiere at the Berlinale festival on 12 February 2010.
Non-fictional allusions
Pierce Brosnan plays the character of Adam Lang, who has echoes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The character is linked to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war on terror and the special relationship with the United States. The author of the book on which the film is based has said he was inspired at least in part by anger toward Blair's policies, and called for him to face war crimes trials.Robert Pugh, who portrayed the former British Foreign Secretary, Richard Rycart, and Mo Asumang, who played the US Secretary of State, both physically resemble their real-life counterparts, Robin Cook and Condoleezza Rice. Like the fictional Rycart, Cook had foreign policy differences with the British Prime Minister. The old man living on Martha's Vineyard is a reference to Robert McNamara. Hatherton Corporation alludes to real-life Halliburton.
Release
The film premired at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival on 12 February 2010,[http://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/berlinale_programm/datenblatt.php?film_id=20100164 Berlin Film Festival Program] and was widely released throughout much of Europe during the following four weeks. It went on general release in the US on 19 March 2010 and in the UK on 16 April 2010.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139328/releaseinfo IMDb: Release dates for The Ghost Writer]. Retrieved 30 January 2012
For the US theatrical release, the dialogue was censored and re-dubbed with tamer language in order to meet the Motion Picture Association's qualifications for a PG-13 rating. The censored PG-13 version was later used for the US DVD and Blu-ray releases while the uncensored version was retained for most international DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Reception
The film has received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that of critics gave positive reviews based on a sample of reviews with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads, "While it may lack the revelatory punch of Polanski's finest films, 'Ghost Writer' benefits from stylish direction, a tense screenplay, and a strong central performance from Ewan McGregor." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, gave the film an average rating of 77% based on 35 reviews. At the end of the year, the film placed at #4 in both 'Film Comment' and 'The Village Voice's annual critics' polls.
Critic Andrew Sarris wrote that the film "constitutes a miracle of artistic and psychological resilience."[http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/mj10/auteurist.htm Filmlinc.com] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars and declared it was "the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller." Jim Hoberman of 'The Village Voice' placed the film at #3 on his year-end list and wrote that "'The Pianist' had its moments, but Polanski hasnt made a movie so sustained in the decades since 'The Tenant' or even 1966s 'Cul de Sac'." Jonathan Rosenbaum would later write that "'The Ghost Writer' is easily Polanskis best film since 'Bitter Moon', and certainly his most masterful." Political analyst William Bradley dubbed it "one of the best films I've seen in recent years" in a review for 'The Huffington Post' that dealt with the film's artistic and political dimensions.Bradley, William (22 March 2010). [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-ghosts-of-tony-blair_b_509269.html "The Ghost(s): Of Tony Blair, Roman Polanski, and A War on Terror"]. 'HuffPost'. Retrieved 5 March 2011. 'The Guardian' said "Roman Polanski's deft take on Robert Harris's political thriller is the director's most purely enjoyable film for years."
However, John Rentoul from the UK's liberal 'The Independent', who describes himself as an "ultra Blairite with a slavish admiration for Tony", and John Rosenthal, from the conservative Pajamas Media, both denounced the film because it was made with financial support from the German government. Rentoul also criticized Polanski describing the film as "propaganda" and a "Blair hating movie".
Keith Uhlich of 'Time Out New York' named 'The Ghost Writer' the second-best film of 2010, describing it as "what an expertly executed thriller is supposed to be."
Awards
The movie has won numerous awards, particularly for Roman Polanski as director, Ewan McGregor in the lead role, and Olivia Williams as Ruth Lang.
See also
*2010 in film
*British films of 2010
*List of films set in London
*List of films set in New England
*List of fictional prime ministers of the United Kingdom
*List of thriller films
*'Roman de Gare' (France, 2006), by Claude Lelouch (who appears as Herv Picard), also about a ghost writer.
References
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