In The Ghost Writer Ewan McGregor — “The Ghost” — is hired to write Tony Blair’s “Adam Lang’s” Ex-UK-PM memoirs after the previous writer dies in a ferry accident.

The photography in this film is striking — absolutely beautiful. For large portions of it Polanski doesn’t let up on the stark beauty of the isolation of the powerful.

There is an old trope, older than Shakespeare, that the state of the land mirrors the state of the King, or of the royal house. In this film McGregor’s character enters into that isolation, into the King’s Elba. Behind layers of security, on a rainy island in the Atlantic, among the endless dunes and the stormy sea, the old King is disturbed in his exile under the perpetual gloaming of the rain-swept heath.

The Ghost is pulled into the unfinished business of his predecessor, acting out the stereotypical occult role. As the moment of his death approaches again he understands what he didn’t in his previous incarnation and moves on to the larger problems of the King himself. He resolves all secrets and vanishes off-camera into a sheaf of paper blown on the breeze, finally merging with the McGuffin-book as he achieves total knowledge.

Of course, great film as it is, this all plays purely on the level of “normal” reality, as a tragic thriller. The archetypal layer lets what amounts to a fairly simple plot play with a deceptive Macbeth-y depth, intruding most into the story through the supporting cast, who are all terrifyingly suspicious of The Ghost, their fear of him a twisted reflection of the audience’s fear for him.

There are some jarring sound edits, presumably to get the film down to a PG/PG-13: a few obvious “fucks” were poorly overdubbed with naughty words more pleasing to American censors. But the beauty of the photography and the haunting story more than compensate.