News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Monday, August 9, 2010

BD impressions: The Ghost Writer

10:44 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

Roman Polanski's latest offering, THE GHOST WRITER (THE GHOST in the UK), has been somewhat overshadowed by its director's temporary stint under house arrest (which prevented him from being present in the editing room during the final stages of post-production)... which is a shame, because I believe every film deserves to stand on its own two feet irrespective of what its filmmakers may have got up to, and THE GHOST WRITER is a very fine thriller indeed.

Somewhat reminiscent of Polanski's own THE NINTH GATE, albeit with a less tongue-in-cheek approach to its subject matter (although it's shot through with Polanski's unmistakable brand of wry humour and fascination with the slightly off-kilter), with Ewan McGregor stepping into the shoes occupied by Johnny Depp in that earlier film - the dogged, slightly naive everyman who finds himself stumbling upon an elaborate conspiracy and putting his own neck on the chopping block in his relentless search for the truth. That the subject of the conspiracy, former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, is so clearly inspired by Tony Blair, gives the material a palpable sense of veracity that the rather silly supernatural frolics of THE NINTH GATE lacked.

Excellent performances all round, with Olivia Williams stealing the show as Lang's spurned wife, and some nice use of the perpetually overcast locales (with various locations in Germany and Denmark standing in for Massachusetts)... although the rather obvious use of green-screen does become a bit distracting at times. Definitely one to watch: there are many layers at work here, and the result is a complex and satisfying thriller that I suspect will stand up to repeat viewings.

Image quality: In order to save a couple of pounds, I ended up picking up the Canadian release from E1 Entertainment rather than the US release by Summit, not realising there was any difference between them. I'm glad I did, as it turns out the US version was cut to obtain a PG-13 rating, with many of the profanities in Pierce Brosnan's many rants being overdubbed with softer variants ("sod 'em" rather than "fuck 'em", etc.). As far as I can gather, the Canadian release is uncut, and therefore it's the version I would recommend people pick up. I'm not sure how the two compare in the image quality department, but this is a fine-looking disc and one that I suspect accurately reflects the look of the original master. It looks to have been degrained - the grain is light and what remains has that "sluggish" look - and detail is perhaps not as crisp as the best the format has to offer, but it's still a very satisfying presentation on the whole. 8/10

The Ghost Writer
studio: E1 Entertainment; country: Canada; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 32 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.89 Mbit/sec

7 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.