Ewan in The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski returns after a considerable absence with the best movie he’s made in 31 years—and I like a lot of the films he made between Tess (1979) and this one. The film works as a political thriller in its own right, but is the sort of work that becomes far more meaningful if you’re familiar with Polanski’s other films. It’s not simply that catching allusions to movies like Cul-de-Sac(1966) or Chinatown (1974) or The Tenant (1976) are bound to bring a smile to fans of the director’s body of work. No, there’s more to it than that. The atmosphere remembered from the chilly Cul-de-Sac (finally being released on DVD—in the UK at least—this month) helps set the tone here and makes what happens between the Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams characters seem almost inevitable in the world of Polanski. The small-scale corruption of Chinatown has gone global in this film. And the theme of loss of identity that permeates The Tenant returns with a lead character so vague in his own existence that he doesn’t even have a name this round. It’s a rich film that, like Shutter Island, only gets better on subsequent viewings. If this doesn’t come in in the top five at the end of the year, it will mean that awards season was very rich indeed.