**** ½
By Bob Clark
Of the myriad twists, turns and genuine surprises to be found throughout The Ghost Writer, perhaps the biggest one is the revelation that Roman Polanski is, in fact, a colossal bookworm. This is, after all, the second thriller he’s built around, of all things, the publishing world, and the fact that he has managed to generate such suspense, charm and black humor out of the writing, reading and editing of printed words on a page must be one of the director’s signature achievements. Perhaps it shouldn’t really be that big of a shock—after all, his first name translates as “novel” in his home-language of French. Like any other filmmaker, Polanski is familiar with reading scripts, and sometimes even writing them himself, penning words both to be spoken and found between the lines that are laced with that characteristic smirking cynicism of his. Some of his defining films, like so many other directors, were based on novels both well known and underreported—how else would most people have heard of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s tale of the book-detective underworld had it not been for Polanski’s wickedly satanic The Ninth Gate? Besides, for a man who’s spent the better part of his adult life avoiding most of the civilized world in the interest of dodging extradition, it’s not as though he’s got anything better to do with his time. He may belong in prison, but at least he’s developed a jail-bird’s hobbies.
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