Hail, Period

 Bon jour!

Here we are on a strange new planet, (with a strange new typeface, I see)...

And we are not going on any trip. My dear husband presented himself as pretty sick yesterday evening, so after much denial and wrestling I got him to go to the ER at Scripps here in Chula Vista where we remained until 11:30 pm, receiving assurances that he was indeed pretty ill and that we were not to go on any trip. He got a huge antibiotic shot and a prescription for more.

So, we are not to go. That's what I get for being gloomy yesterday.  Reminder to self: Lighten up.

Back, then, to The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski.  Since writing my blog yesterday I have visited some websites about that fascinating picture, and have no review to make.  David Denby of the New Yorker, said it all on March 08, 2010 in  his review. 

One thing he did not say, to my recollection, is the contribution that music makes to a film.  The composer, Alexandre Desplay, has scored a number of other important pictures. His remarks about his choices of instrumentation and other facets of the piece are very interesting.  He used three flutes as the ghostly voice. There is no real ghost in the movie, of course (spoiler?), but it is certainly eerie. The real events displayed (espionage, rendition, torture, government control), while not depicted onscreen , are the really harrowing ghosts of our time.  Desplay's music perfectly depicts, supports, creates, carries,the fright and tension carried by the ghost writer as he flounders his way into a terrible international secret.  Superficial folk like myself will enjoy seeing some of the major political figures of our recent past convincingly reproduced onscreen.  I know that Mr Polanski is reputed a sleazebag of the worst order. I hate all his goings-on. But he has a mind, an imagination, and lots of determination to  have made this "American" movie in a northern European location.  I really thought this was an interesting film. YAZZYBEL