+4
We just got Netflix so we're deluged with lots of films we would normally never see. Aside from my surprised, qualified admiration of "The Borgias" (I'm shocked to say that one of my least fave actors, Jeremy Irons, really did carry this series!), I'd say that "Ghost Writer", with Ewan Macgregor, was an excellent film. Sure, I didn't understand much of it, especially why the main character, ex-PM played by Pierce Brosnan, was so in absentia, but aside from that it was pretty attention-getting in a Hitchockian way. On a scale of Hitch-ness, I'd probably rank it below "Identity" and just on a par with the TV show "Bates Motel".
I also expected more from Kim Cattrall, who was so riveting as Tom Hanks' wife in "Bonfire of the Vanities", but she came and went like an October gale. I know they were supposed to be on the PM's vacation house on Martha's Vineyard (Sidebar: WHY would a Brit ever choose a place that so thoroughly approximates his own sceptered isle in winter as a vac house??!...'Nuff said). It didn't look like the Vineyard at all....I was convinced that they were either on the Aran Islands, in Denmark or on the Great lakes! But I must say that they got the Ye Olde New Englande architecture down pat!
I'd have to say that, despite the Worricker-esque implications of PM's mixed up in CIA black sites and torture, it was all safe as milk. Leave the hard stuff to Johnny and gentleman spies like Davy Jones!
I won't go on and ruin the ending for anyone but suffice it to say that I was gobsmacked, surprised, caught out and so on at the ending. It left one feeling like one needed a mint...or maybe more.
As I write this, I am listening to Mendelssohn's incidental music to "Midsummer Night's Comedy" and all I can say is that Woody Allen really should have directed Ghost Writer as he did "Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" (for there WAS a lot of comedy in this film and Ewan KNEW it!) and NOT Roman Polanski, despite my love of "Chinatown". What shame they drove that guy out of the U.S.!
Still, the steadily gray skies, sea, sand and even towns were quite effective in giving Magregor's purpose some sort of relief...or whatever. I felt like I was watching a very anemic episode of "Wallander" toward the end.