The Ghost," Oscar-winning Roman Polanski ("The Pianist") first contemporary thriller in more than 20 years, tells the story of a former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, (Pierce Brosnan) who is holed up on an island off America’s Eastern seaboard in midwinter, writing his memoirs. When his long-standing aide drowns, a professional ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) is sent out to help him finish the book.
Polanksi as Collaborator
Harris found that he and Polanski had a similar approach to storytelling that made their collaboration all the more enjoyable. “ Just as I’m less interested in writing shimmering prose for the sake of shimmering prose, so I don’t think that he’s interested in a particular shot or a particular dramatic piece of cinema happening for the sake of just showing off. It's always story, character and logic. It was such a joy working on the screenplay.”
The page-turning novel that became the script was influenced by the master of the art of suspense. “I hugely admire the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock,” says Harris. “The way an ordinary guy gets plunged into a completely strange world, yet every step of what happens is completely logical. Yet it becomes more and more crazy. I like that genre and Hitchcock was the master of it. And certainly I tried to put an element of that in The Ghost. This is an ordinary, nameless guy, who happens to do a job that takes him into a completely extraordinary world. And we go into that world with him. What appeals to me, and I think to Roman as well, about the thriller genre is that it has fantastic narrative energy and drive.”
Veiled Story of Tony Blair?
Although there are obvious similarities between Tony and Cherie Blair and the characters of the Lang’s in the film, Harris stresses the universality of the themes. “Writing about power is the thing that I’m most interested in and all my novels, in a way, are examinations of power. I'm particularly interested in the phenomenon of the leader who loses power, be it Richard Nixon or Margaret Thatcher. How do they readjust? What takes a person to the top and then what's it like to lose that power. When I started writing the image of Tony Blair went out of the window, and I created – I hope – this universal political figure.”
As a political journalist who for a time was close to Tony Blair just before and after he became Prime Minister, Harris was in the rare position of having a ring-side seat at the center of British politics. “I acquired a lot of information on the inside track. I got access which no journalist got at that time, let alone a novelist. I was able to acquire information about the way people react under pressure, the way one lives in the security bubble, the relationship with power, the excitement and the adrenaline of it. And it gave me the confidence to imagine is how someone would behave in that situation.”
As producer Robert Benmussa, who has worked with the director since 1992’s Bitter Moon, says, “In all of Polanski’s films, there are many layers, and one of the leitmotifs of all of his films is the struggle to bring the truth that lies beneath to light, to show the reality behind appearances. Justice is something he holds dear. But never without irony.”
The Setting
Isolation: Polanski's Recurrent Theme
Disclosing the Truth
Secrets and Codes
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