Buy it... if you are entranced by the intelligent and uniquely applied style of Alexandre Desplat at his most rhythmically frantic and disjointedly paranoid reaches.

Avoid it... if perpetually unnerving staccato movements of quiet disharmony and a bizarre, awkwardly exotic primary theme promise to stick you with a thousand needles for the entire duration of this dispiriting album.

Desplat

The Ghost Writer: (Alexandre Desplat) Despite its widespread critical praise, the 2010 political thriller The Ghost Writer may be better remembered by the geneeral public as the production delayed while director, writer, and producer Roman Polanski was arrested for a 25-year-old sex crime and held under house arrest in Switzerland. Regardless of the seemingly endless intrigue involved with the famed director's checkered past, The Ghost Writer retained many of Polanski's trademark cinematic touches, especially in the flow of clues to its perilous mystery. It's a film worthy of exploration for its interesting cast alone, Pierce Brosnan playing a former British Prime Minister (modeled clearly after his contemporary, Tony Blair) and Ewan McGregor an accomplished ghostwriter employed to complete his memoirs after his predecessor met a supposedly accidental demise. As the Prime Minister becomes the target of war crimes accusations for handing over terrorist suspects to the American CIA for torture, the ghostwriter stumbles upon shady aspects relating to both that matter and clues left behind by the previous writer. Love triangles and strained relationships involving the Prime Minister's wife and assistant/mistress complicate matters, and the latter half of the film deals out both death and retribution with extreme malice. Polanski has worked with countless famous composers from around America and Europe through the years, and Alexandre Deesplat joined The Ghost Writer to become yet another of his collaborations. Desplat's developing versatility in the 2000's has included several suspense scores ranging from frantic to snazzy, some of which laced with intense interludes of rambling action. Knowing these scores, The Ghost Writer will not sound particularly foreign to the ears of any Desplat collector. Just how paranoid and disillusioning the music manages to be in its entirety is perhaps the kicker, both to the benefit of an intellectual appreciation and the detriment of a sane listening experience outside of context.

There is no doubt that Desplat immediately creates an uncomfortable, prickly environment of rhythmic unease and disjointed harmonies for The Ghost Writer, nurtures and develops that sound into even less pleasant variations as the tension on screen arises, and only barely allows a sense of bittersweet resolution at the end. Film score collectors in general will find similarities in technique and character to Bernard Herrmann's multitude of similar assignments, both in the unconventional instrumental handling and the fact that there is almost no respite from the uncomfortable tone of the music from start to end. The comparisons to Herrmann are clearly inevitable (especially when one hears "The Predecessor"), though the score is still firmly rooted in the musical style of Desplat's existing methodology, perhaps to a fault for some listeners. Whereas the score for The Ghost Writer doesn't really attempt to establish its themes as dominant factors, the emphasis on unusual instrumentation is overwhelming. Applications of woodwinds in particular border on the realm of the bizarre, sustaining the score's thematic passages with awkwardly puffed, bubbling, and frantically staccato performances of bassoons below intentionally unrefined higher woodwinds in the lead. Strings contribute disharmony in their quietly unnerving ostinatos, shifting out of harmony frequently in Herrmann fashion. Brass in unison is usually saved for the score's chase and resolution cues, though a muted trumpet offers an obvious noir sensibility. Percussion is exercised in even more abrasive staccato movements, from harp and piano to Desplat's usual range of struck metallic accents. Many of the first three sections' performances are constructed to emulate the role of the drums (snare and timpani) despite the presence of the latter group in some sequences. Desplat's famous, pulsating electronic base tone is employed sparingly, though thankfully pushed further back into the mix (as in the latter half of "The Predecessor"). This collection of sounds is often overlapped with discord in mind, only rarely allowing, as in "Lang's Memoirs," for somewhat coordinated harmony in the ensemble to suggest any warmth.

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The score's main theme is buffered by several rhythmic motifs for secondary elements that are fragmented and mutilated by Desplat so thoroughly that they're quite difficult to pin down. The theme itself is a strangely exotic idea, nothing you'd expect to befit a British prime minister. Its nimbly slithering progressions are very challenging to appreciate and, when torn to pieces throughout the score, also troubling to nail down. Its fullest performances include "The Ghost Writer" and a fuller incarnation in "Travel to the Island." Whether including fragments of this theme or recurring rhythmic motifs, The Ghost Writer is a score perpetually in motion, not content to roost in any single idea but instead shifting with paranoia through fresh instrumental applications in constant rhythms to maintain forward movement. Unfortunately, most of these cues fail to accomplish anything tangible outside of unnerving the listener, a successful tool for the unraveling mystery on screen but less than ideal on album. The action cue "Chase on the Ferry" suffers from Desplat's typical inability to sustain interesting full ensemble ideas of force for long enough to merit standalone appreciation. Upon moments when the composer does bring together the performing group into some semblance of resolve with ominous gravity, the score becomes fantastic, however. These cues include the better rounded, harmonious soundscape in "Prints" and the very impressive climax in the final minutes of "The Truth About Ruth." If only Desplat could maintain dramatic depth of this resounding power for longer periods, perhaps in foreshadowing form though his scores, his music would be far more accessible. His decision to poke the listener with needles from the very start of the score causes the lack of a building sense of tension that unfortunately ignores the successive revelations in the investigation. Also, as usual, an extremely dry and dull recording does an immense disservice to the instrumental design of yet another Desplat score; some moderate, tasteful reverb could make this score soar in parts. Instead, The Ghost Writer is simply a very effective tool of aggravation that will delight enthusiasts of Deplat's attention to precision. But be forewarned of the relentless paranoia that comes with that technique in this frenzied incarnation of the composer's distinctive style.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: ****
Music as Heard on Album: ***
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Alexandre Desplat reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.21 (in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.1 (in 10,771 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.