The Ghost Writer 3/10/10
Effective film trade-craft involves supporting the text of the narrative with the conventions used to physically make the film, such as the choice to use handheld camera work to reinforce the idea of a chaotic or unstable story world. In the case of The Ghost Writer, the reverse is happening in so much that volitionally placed symbolism representing exercises in futility—sweeping up leaves in the wind, riding a bicycle in deep sinking gravel—reinforces the real-life, non-story world in which the filmmakers’ fielding of an intellectually blunted, emotionally inanimate, and wholly uninspired movie is futility in its purest form.
