In February 2004, twenty three illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in Morecambe Bay. This film follows the journey of one immigrant, Ai Qin, who sets out from China to travel to England to make a lot of money to support her young son. The travel is expensive (£25,000) and the journey takes over six months, illegally grossing many borders by hiding in containers or secret compartments. When she arrives in London, Qin finds herself taken north where she joins a crowded squat of other Chinese people and, after purchasing fake papers, gets hard labour jobs with long hours and low wages.
I'll be honest and say that Ghosts sat on my HDD for around about eight months before I finally got to watching it it just never felt like I was in the mood for it. Tonight I decided to watch it and in a way I still feel a bit like it was something I had to see rather than was glad that I saw. It is not a great film and I think it is worth me saying that out loud. A lot of the very positive reviews I have read have tended to focus on the importance of the topic, the scale of the problem or the human suffering involved. These are not things of Broomfield's creation nor things that the film should be credited for. In tackling these subjects I have no qualms acknowledging that the film is certainly "worthy" but this should not be mistaken for the film being brilliant.
That said, it is a good piece of work that does gain credit for highlighting the subject in a film. The making of is typically Broomfield and is a documentary style without formal script or professional actors. At times this does hurt the film because some scenes are clunky and more than a couple of performances are stiff and unnatural. Fortunately these do not badly affect the film in the main, in particular Ai Qin Lin is very convincing and touching in her turn, and many of the other main players are good. Broomfield doesn't help himself either because not only is the film slightly longer than it can bear, but he does labour his points heavily at times. In one scene we have a clumsy piece of dialogue where one characters asks where the vegetables they are illegally picking will be sent and "Asda, Sainburys, Tesco, supermarkets" is the reply. This is a crass and clumsy way to make a good point and it does damage the point. Sadly there are several examples like that one, not least of which is the caption that declares the British Government has refused to help pay off the debts the families of the twenty-three still have, as if that is the crux of the problem.
Despite these issues the film is still quite good but, because of them, it is not as great as many would have you believe. However it is an important and worthy film and, for all its flaws I would still recommend you see it or the good it has in its making, message and topic.
