The Ghost Writer is a pretty unknown movie from 2010 starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. It’s a political thriller which I enjoyed for the dreary tense atmosphere engulfing the whole film.
But the real star for me was the house. Pierce Brosnan plays the British Prime Minister who’s taking refuge on some small island off the coast of the US. When Ewan McGregor’s character (the eponymous but otherwise unnamed ‘ghost writer’) first approaches the house I couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. The whole house is rugged, grey, linear and so finely detailed. You can see the windows overlapping the columns and the beautiful full height window that goes (implausibly) up to the roof line. It’s not often that architecture gets a starring role in a film!
The interiors are no less impressive and I found this write up at Home Designing really descriptive:
During the day shots the fortress of a house was flooded with sunlight via large windows framing serene views, illustrating the isolated location of the home. The colors of the landscape bleed into the dramatic interior, and the use of natural textures fuse the inside and outside spaces.
I wanted to know more about the house and the designer but alas it turns out the entire thing was just one big set. The outside shots were taken in one location and the interiors somewhere else. What a shame as it’s really quite a beautiful building!
You can read the rest of the article and see more photos here.