Director: Roman Polanski
Writers: Robert Harris, Roman Polanski
Photography: Pawel Edelman
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Editor: Herve de Luze
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Robert Pugh, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal
I liked this quite a bit more the first time I saw it, so much so that I named it as my favorite movie of 2010 some six months or so ago (even understanding there were still a good many gaps to fill eventually, as there usually are with year-end exercises). I suppose I may have had some motivation to defend an artist whose work I love a good deal against the transgressions committed by the man, lately returned to higher profile. In my mind, I had The Ghost Writer slotted (in a generally weak year) as mid-range second-tier Polanski along with such titles as Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden. Now I'm inclined to put it more at the level of The Ninth Gate, an interesting mess with unfortunate overtones of professionalism and some pronounced tendency toward foolishness. A lot of my problems with it now lie in the story, particularly the ludicrous resolution, so of necessity there will be spoilers on the other side of the jump. Beware.
The good news is that it remains on the surface an appealing enough political thriller, reminiscent in many ways, I think almost self-consciously so, of Hitchcock—there's a bit of a "wrong man" thing going with the story and an intriguing mystery, but it's Alexandre Desplat's score that does much of the work recalling Hitchcock. There's even a theme that emerges toward the end that I swear comes directly out of a Hitchcock picture, though I can't put my finger on which one. But it's so familiar it's almost distracting. The music is overbearing, deliberately so, intruding constantly on the action, particularly in the transitions. If it were as bad as some of what we get from, say, Hans Zimmer, it would be unbearable simply because of the way it's used. Instead it's one of the most effective elements here.
One of Polanski's greatest strengths is also in play, his ability to identify and cast Hollywood character actors who can bring a uniquely potent presence to the story. Here the best of them may be Tom Wilkinson as a glowering, malevolent Ivy League law professor. But an Eli Wallach well into his 90s very nearly steals the show with one brief scene. Kim Cattrall's range is somewhat limited but she's also pretty well placed here.
The marquee players are good too—in the case of Pierce Brosnan as a Tony Blair knockoff, actually nothing short of outstanding, a pleasant surprise—but here is where some of the Ninth Gate problems begin to show. Brosnan (and Olivia Williams) seemed to understand better than Ewan McGregor that when one attempts to burnish one's bona fides and gravitas by working with a director such as Polanski, it's advisable to actually put some effort into it. The handsome profile and soft British accent won't get you by in quite the same fashion that they tend to in paycheck movies. For the most part McGregor, as the otherwise unnamed title character (ultimately an annoying affectation itself), appears to be sleepwalking through this, resorting by turns to variously puckish and wry manners of deportment and little more.
But McGregor isn't the real problem here. He's merely adequate where Brosnan is fully engaged and evidently having himself a good time. Even McGregor's performance, low-key going on inert, might have been made to work if the ridiculous payoff to the story were just a little more believable. Or believable at all. I'm not disappointed in the way that Polanski handled it, which is actually nicely cinematic in places, such as an elaborate, effective little set piece of a note-passing at the end, and then the final shot of the pages of a manuscript twisting and curling in the wind of a gray winter dusk, flying in all directions. That's good stuff.
It's the ideas underneath that that not only didn't stand up on a second viewing, but seemed painfully silly. A nice slow-burn build throughout, and then this? First that a prime minister of England turns out to be a long-nurtured CIA asset? I don't know whether to cry foul by reason of credibility or by reason of cliché. But I want to cry foul, that's for sure. Then "hiding" the evidence for it in the first words of each chapter of his political memoirs? What? (Or better: WTF?) The realization, nearly all the big reveals, and the resultant assassination happen on the night of the book release party within a real-time space of approximately 25 minutes, compressed to less than that in terms of screen time.
It's hard to think of another movie that collapses so completely on itself to get across the finish line with something it thinks it can call a resolution. (I haven't mentioned the complete inversion of Kim Cattrall's character, which appears to occur only to get Ewan McGregor to the book release party.) It effectively deflates the whole thing. What had once seemed a nifty, moody political thriller now seems more something bent and distorted to showcase its strengths—Desplat's music and Polanski's visuals. They work fine as a kind of sleight-of-hand work of prestidigitation the first time through, for me anyway (others saw through this right away). But the whole thing only seems annoying now as I start to grasp how very little there that there is there.
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