New on DVD: The Ghost Writer

He introduces himself, simply, as the Ghost. He has no family, no attachments. We never know his name.

He makes his living by chewing on the lives of bolder, braver beings, hovering and hearing as his subjects spill their secrets. Then, like a medieval familiar, he takes their stories and spells them out, retouched, reshaped, reformed. He keeps to the shadows of the text--a hidden voice in the vowels, barely whispered.

Now he's being paid to be the ghost of Adam Lang--a former prime minister of Great Britain. Lang's a likable chap who wears an easy smile, wields a glib wit and has the unfortunate habit of calling people "man" when he can't remember their names. Lang was an incredibly popular candidate back in the day: "He wasn't a politician, he was a craze," our Ghost recalls. But once in office, Lang made some decisions that haunt him still. 

Lang had hoped to spend a few weeks wrapping up his autobiography--a project put on hold when his last ghostwriter was found dead, drowned. But now, just as the Ghost comes aboard to help Lang finish the book, the politician is distracted by one of his old decisions: his authorization to secretly apprehend a handful of suspected terrorists and hand them over to the CIA--where they were promptly waterboarded. Because international law deems waterboarding to be torture, and because Great Britain has placed itself in subject to such law, Lang is in danger of being arrested, tried and convicted as a war criminal. 

The predicament is a potential boon for book sales but a personal disaster for Lang. In the

midst of an extended speaking tour in the United States, the former head of state is suddenly marooned there, unable to return to Britain for fear he'll be dragged away in handcuffs. So he, his wife and his staff barricade themselves in a bunker of a beach house, hoping somehow to beat off the assault. 

The Ghost is there too, of course ... hovering in the background, asking questions, poring over the first draft of Lang's autobiography. And, as he does so, he begins to find clues his predecessor left behind--photos, phone numbers, hints that even before this newest crisis, all was not as it seemed with Adam Lang. 

The Ghost begins wondering whether the previous writer's death was as accidental as it seemed.

The Ghost Writer is, on some level, another cinematic critique of the War on Terror. Author Robert Harris, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, says the inspiration behind Lang was Tony Blair, a former prime minister who many in Britain thought was too chummy with the United States and therefore too sympathetic to the U.S.'s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. To underscore its point, the film casts a harsh light on the CIA and some of its "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Yet for all its (at times) pandering political underpinnings, the film is also a deeply thoughtful thriller that treats Lang with more respect than you'd expect. You have to wonder whether director Roman Polanski--accused decades ago of raping a young teen girl--felt a kinship of sorts with Lang. He, like Lang, committed a crime that made him a polarizing figure, both loved and loathed. He, like Lang, was threatened with arrest and imprisonment if he ever returned home, leaving him a well-moneyed outcast. Perhaps he and Lang both feel as if they're misunderstood. And perhaps Polanski is doing what most everyone else in the film--Ruth, Amelia, the Ghost--is doing: softly, quietly trying to graft a small bit of themselves onto Adam Lang.

Because everyone in The Ghost Writer is something of a ghost. This is a film about influence and subterfuge, where everyone haunts and is haunted. And for me resonance lies in this lesson, that there are people and things all around us, trying to make themselves a part of us. It resonates far more than the movie itself--which is actually little more than a well-told thriller that gets tangled up in booze and trips on bits of violence and profanity. 

The overt story the film tells is, in some respects, less important than the subtle influence it can wield in our daily walks, without us ever noticing. We may not decide that Tony Blair really was a CIA lackey after seeing The Ghost Writer. But after watching it and a hundred other films just like it we may be slightly more inclined to think that drinking the strong stuff every night is OK, or a little more willing to excuse infidelity if the other partner was unfaithful first. These nudges, slowly normalizing behaviors that we thought were wrong before, are also whispers of the ghosts.