We are back to the relationship between original novels and adapted movies. Sometimes after watching a movie, we don’t miss the novel or read it. The novel is curious about the movie version. Sometimes when I read a novel and then watch a movie, I feel like a waste of time. Robert Harris's novel "The Ghost" is a good example. When the movie "The Ghost Writer" (The Ghost Writer) by Roman Polanski was released, he felt that the novel was nothing short of nothing.
Of course, the novel is not useless, Robert Harris also participated in the screenwriting work of "Shadow Writer", but Polanski handled it very wonderfully, which made the novel compare to it. In fact, Polanski is very loyal to the original work, and his main focus is to visualize and subtract, to remove the waste and save the gossip (Polanski also appropriately added the visual elements of tracking and escaping). From the perspectives of genre and real politics, both original novels and adapted films have room for exploration.
In terms of genre, "Shadow Writer" can be regarded as a thriller film, but the actual handling is full of detective film strokes. The protagonist "I" was appointed as the ghost writer (Ghost) in a short time, writing for the former British Prime Minister Adam Lang In the autobiography, the bizarre death of the former ghostwriter Mike McAra made "I" very puzzled. "I" found clues in Mike McAra's relics. Through open and unannounced visits, he stepped closer to the core of the truth. "Shadow Killing Order" is not a detective film, because there is no leading detective character. But it has the main elements of a detective film: mystery, puzzle, and investigation.
Because "I" must accommodate Adam Lang, so from the United Kingdom to an isolated island in the United States to visit and write, the confinement plot must attract Polanski. In a strange foreign land, "I" learned part of the truth through the Internet, interacting with Adam Lang's former friends and political opponents, but all the facts are actually as early as in the draft of Adam Lang's autobiography by Mike McAra-textual Interpretation, or decoding through special interpretations, to sort out the meaning from the miscellaneous information, is the most fascinating part of "Shadow Writer", which also teaches people to think of Dan. Brown (Dan Brown)'s suspense novel, Robert Harris has not been affected by Dan. Brown’s influence is irrelevant (of course Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock]’s influence is seen by everyone, but Polanski uses the supporting actor Ewan McGregor of the movie "Angels and Demons" as the ghostwriter "I". It seems intriguing). The important thing is that these popular novels attach great importance to text interpretation, which shows that in an era of information explosion, how to read information, how to process information, and how to dig meaning from words are important tasks that individuals need to consider. , If you are what you read is right, then the relationship between the individual and the information text is a subject worth pondering in this era.
The novel is a bit messy. There are a lot of extra words in the more than 400 pages, but the film is smooth and direct. When the novel was published, one of the hot topics of discussion was whether Adam Lang alluded to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. I don’t need to talk about it. I only know that Robert Harris is very good at British politics. He was a British BBC reporter and political editor of The Observer. In the recommended preface for the Chinese translation of his other work "Fatherland", author Li Dahan pointed out "It talks about the relationship between the ego and the state, it talks about the relationship between individual free will and collective thought control, it talks about the relationship between your present situation and the outside world that you cannot imagine, it It’s about the relationship between what you hear and the reality you see.”
I think this passage in "The Ghost" and "Shadow Writer" is also appropriate and vivid, and what Robert Harris teaches people to appreciate is that he does not avoid confrontation, is not afraid of huge power manipulation, and defends his self-confidence. Although it is a fateful failure in the end, the political will to seek truth in the process is undoubtedly the meaning. And when the antagonistic relationship between the power demon hand and the innocent ego is placed in the hands of Polanski, the "evil master", it looks extremely terrifying. The darkness is like the sly sky full of clouds in London, and the raindrops are also wet. Teach passers-by who can't avoid them one by one.
View more about The Ghost Writer reviews
