Cars and Hamlet’s Ghost in Polanski’s “Ghost Writer”

I’ve never seen cars depicted so malevolently and anthropomorphically as they are in Polanski’s new film, The Ghost Writer.

Polanski bet that we are so identified with our cars that they could be used as stand-ins for people and still deliver the emotional weight the story needs; that the audience would view the car as a person, or as the natural symbol of a person, or as the natural extension and amplifier of human needs and “drives” and that we would feel what we need to feel without seeing a person.

And Polanski was right.

The movie’s opening shot of an abandoned car blocking the flow of cars off the ferry perfectly evoked death. We did not yet know if a person was also dead. But the car was effectively “dead” and the shot of it being towed off the ferry felt like the removal of a casket from a hearse. (The scene showing the actual writer lying dead in the ocean surf was less moving.) And the assistant to the English minister Rycart communicates with his boss from within a car by flashing the headlights. In these days of cell phones I expected to hear a voice. No. The car spoke for him.

It was also the first time I saw a movie make use of a car’s GPS system for dramatic effect.  It acts as the first murdered ghost writer’s ghost — it is the updated ghost of Hamlet’s father that appears from beyond the grave to direct Hamlet to avenge his murder. And what other form would a ghost take today to get through to us, to make its case?

In Hamlet, the ghost takes human form. It is the image of Hamlet’s father. But in Polanski’s world the ghost appears as a car, which is the natural home of today’s human form. In fact, the car is the place of refuge and safety. Pedestrians and bicycle riders are killed or almost killed (like when the Ghost Writer biked out of Lang’s compound). In the car the Ghost Writer can escape danger. He is vulnerable on the ferry because he is forced to leave his car.

And, of course, he is killed by a car. And again, the human death is not shown. The car is an adequate substitute for death, as it is for home, safety, and the yearning of murdered souls for some justice.

Damned good, provocative, original. Computers, usually cast as villains in film (e.g., HAL), are benign tools. They are demystified. Instead, Polanski re-imagines what is so prevalent that they have become invisible: cars.

Smart stuff.