Controversy sells. At least sometimes it does.
Roman Polanski (above, lower photo), under house arrest in Switzerland while fighting extradition to the United States on charges of having had sexual intercourse with a minor in the late 1970s, was named Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival for The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan McGregor (above, top photo), Pierce Brosnan, and Kim Cattrall. This weekend, the political thriller had the highest per screen average by far at the US box office: $45,752 at four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, for a total of $183,009 according to Box Office Mojo.
Some, including several commenting on this blog, remarked that those who watched Polanski's movies — be it Chinatown, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Tess, Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, or The Pianist — were aiding a child rapist, adding they would boycott the work of all of the dozens of celebrities who signed several petitions demanding Polanski's release. Clearly, there are many who don't see things quite that way. (One of the signatories was Martin Scorsese, whose Shutter Island grossed more than $40 million at the box office this past weekend.)
Critics, for their part, were mostly enthralled with Polanski's latest.
In The Christian Science Monitor, Peter Rainer called The Ghost Writer a "deft political thriller … [that is] equal parts comedy and black comedy. Gracefully, inexorably, it goes from silly to scabrous. The film may seem insubstantial while you’re watching it, but, in its own tingly, deadpan way, it has many of Polanski’s trademarks: a curdling, cruel humor; an outsider hero who is also a patsy; and a pervasive dread."
Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times: "Between his September arrest in Switzerland and the media rehashing of the case that made him flee the U.S. in the first place, it's been possible to forget that his powerful gifts as a filmmaker were what made him famous in the first place.
"With the deliciously unsettling The Ghost Writer, however, a dark pearl of a movie whose great flair and precision make it Polanski's best work in quite a while, the 76-year-old director forcefully reminds us what all the fuss was about."
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: "Roman Polanski's latest movie happens to be about a public figure, once hugely admired, now disgraced, fearing extradition and prosecution and confined to virtual house arrest in a vacation spot for rich people.
"Did the director, when he shot this film, get a chill presentiment of how personal it was all going to look? Maybe. But it didn't stop him making a gripping conspiracy thriller and scabrous political satire, a Manchurian Candidate for the 2010s, as addictive and outrageous as the Robert Harris bestseller on which it's based. … This is his most purely enjoyable picture for years, a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet, brought off with confidence and dash."
Don't be too surprised if Roman Polanski ends up getting an Academy Award nomination in early 2011. That's certainly not impossible; he was nominated for Tess two years after his flight from the United States, and he won an Oscar for The Pianist in early 2003.
I should add that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the inspiration for the character played by Pierce Brosnan in The Ghost Writer. However, unlike the Ghost Writer lead (or Roman Polanski, for that matter), Blair isn't under any sort of house arrest. In fact, despite a Iraq War inquiry held in Britain a few weeks ago, Iraq War co-orchestrator Blair — approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the 2003 invasion — was just recently in Liberia and is now in Nigeria.
Photos: The Ghost Writer (Kinowelt GmbH)
Of course it should have ended ages ago, Don, but the judges just love/d playing with the case for various political reasons, which the analyses and comments there, or even other freely available legal sources have explained already why. They never listened to him then, they never listened to her now – it’s pure exploitation by now. She never wanted him in prison, they both long ago came to an agreement, and only the vicious media/public has made it into another very ugly witch hunt.
As for Penn and Portman – the most I can come up with is that she was in Polanski’s ‘fake’ perfume commercial ‘Greed’, that Penn will probably end up in jail again for another battery/assault charge, and that the two once dated.
I doubt Polanski would want him on his set, he’s too violent and disruptive. Besides, the film is in its preliminaries and Reza has a say in the casting too. So I don’t know. Ta for now.
Marshall , it was a very long but interesting
read.
It's time they let it go.
If they don't do-it for Roman Polanski then AT
LEAST for his victim.
Do you know that Samantha Geimer thinks that 2009
was worse than 1977 , when Roman abused her ?
The press (a very ugly media circus) , the nasty
gossip (people say a million things and only out
of a million is honest) , some even attacked the
victim calling her a whore.
They only do that because they want Samantha to
PUNISH Roman Polanski.
But that will FORTUNATELY never happen.
And if distributors in America are a little
smarter than i thought , they must give his new
film a massive release with at least 5000 copies
running throughout the USA.
I Have a question for you : I have heard that
Sean Penn and Natalie Portman will star in Roman's
next movie "God Of Carnage" , but i don't know if
that's true.
Do you know something about it that i don't know ?
Have a nice weekend.
Don – Of course I know Maastricht – not only for the 'treaty', but for the Limburg/er cheese and that it's very multi cultural.
As for Polanski's films, I have them all on DVD and will watch Ghostwriter in the cinema. And yes, I know his daughter is in it, and several others actually like his son. I'm only 16 years Polanski's junior, so I was there when Tate was murdered, and of course I know of the 1977 case. But I for one don't believe in black and white stories of it, and I know the Seventies, and Hollywood.
If you want to find our more about the important sociopolitical and legal side of the messy case, let me be so bold dear blogmaster, to link you [both] to an in-depth analysis of it, written by someone who also was there, to unravel the much more complex events bit by bit and form a wider view of it. That's the [very] long version.
http://novalislore.wordpress.com/
Hello Marshall
I'm from The Netherlands.
I don't live in Amsterdam , but in a small place
called Limburg (Maastricht).
Maybe you've heard of it , maybe you didn't.
But i can tell you one thing :
I've seen SEVEN films of Roman Polanski in the
cinema ("Tess"/"Frantic"/"Bitter Moon" twice/
"Death And The Maiden"/"The Ninth Gate"/"The
Pianist").
Six movies , "Bitter Moon" twice , means that
i've bought SEVEN TICKETS for Roman Polanski's
films and "The Ghost Writer" follows next.
And after that i'll see the movie that he's
writing the screenplay for these days "God Of
Carnage".
Nevertheless I WISH that Roman Polanski had never
done the things he did with that girl.
By the way , Do you know that Morgane Polanski
(his 16 year old daughter) is also in this film ?
I'm not sure where you are, Don, but in the US they're lagging behind now with a measly 4 screens, just out of spite – and not to give him much royalties for it. I unfortunately have to wait till April here in the UK, while Shutter arrives in March I will not watch. Nice he got a little Silver Bear for it too.
This movie THE GHOST WRITER will become the
biggest box office hit Roman Polanski has ever
had.
In Europe EVERY COUNTRY is going to release this
film , THEY KNOW HOW BIG IT'S GOING TO BE.
Bad publicity is sometimes good publicity.
When i go to the theater to see this film and
somebody has the nerve to stop me , that person
spends the next six months in a hospital.
The superior Ghostwriter is screened in only four US cinemas, true, while Scorsese's Berlinale flop is shown in three thousand – go 'figure' why he's grossed more despite lesser ticket sales per screen, when Ghostwriter in fact would have grossed multiple times that of Scorsese's film. Had they levelled its release the public in fact want to see, but now can't because distributors are so dumb not to show it more widely, they entirely self-defeated their objective of making money.