Kenneth Turan: ‘The Ghost Writer’

Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival last weekend for this film, and it is easy to see why. Made by a filmmaker suddenly returned to the height of his powers, “The Ghost Writer” is a thriller wrapped around a roman à clef about contemporary politics wrapped around Polanski’s perennial blanket cynicism about the helplessness of individuals against the entrenched strength of the powerful. His effortless blending of personal preoccupations with audience preferences recalls, as so much of this film does, the classic work of Alfred Hitchcock.

-- Kenneth Turan