|
Ghost World (November 5, 2001)
Based on the underground comic book, "Ghost World" is about bizarre, antisocial characters trying to find their way in society. Directed by Terry Zwigoff (also of the legendary documentary "Crumb") would you expect it to be about anything else?
Enid (Thora Birch, "American Beauty") and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson, "The Horse Whisperer") are two 18 year-old girls who have just survived high school. Cynical and unmotivated, the two decide to skip college and spend their time looking for an apartment and unleashing their vicious social commentary on all the losers who are unaware of them. Keeping an arm’s length distance from life and love, Enid unexpectedly meets an unsociable record collector named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) who intrigues the young pessimist with their shared bleak outlook on life. As Enid begins to fall for Seymour, she also begins to push away Rebecca, thus alienating herself from the one person who understood her world view.
As a celebration of the ridiculous, "Ghost World" is a marvel of a picture that often refuses to play it safe. It goes for uncomfortable laughs and showcases characters who represent everyday people, and not just cartoons of eccentricity. The inhabitants of "Ghost World" are mean, melancholy, pathetic, undemonstrative, prejudiced, loud, and unfriendly. Zwigoff doesn’t shy away from these less than pleasant attributes. He instead welcomes them, and wraps them into the fabric of Enid and Rebecca’s world.
Through the first-rate screenplay by Zwigoff and "Ghost World" creator Daniel Clowes, the two never once stop to point fingers at the lunacy on display in this film. From a paraplegic who uses a laptop to answer the question of the day at the local coffee shop, a heavy metal lowlife (Dave Sheridan, portraying the film’s funniest character) who loves nothing more than to torment the local convenience store owner, to a group of defeated record collectors who spend hours discussing hairline cracks in ancient 78 rpm albums. Most filmmakers would cock the rifle of mockery right away at these misfits, but Zwigoff and Clowes never judge. Like David Lynch and often the Farrelly Brothers, Zwigoff seems to adore the oddballs of life.
The scary thing of it is, "Ghost World" shares many of the same societal beliefs as "Crumb" did. In losing our once colorful world to the monotonous landscape of chain restaurants and mini-malls, Zwigoff resuscitates the feelings of disillusionment that he so carefully extracted from cartoonist R. Crumb in his documentary on the artist. Enid and Rebecca’s cynicism is not tragic or caustic, it’s more a direct byproduct of the loss of culture around them. The death of Americana is not a rare theme for a film, but "Ghost World" positively mourns it. The candor in which the film traffics is cinematically invigorating.
"Ghost World" is more character oriented than story minded, and that leaves the film with a very disorganized feel to it. Enid and Rebecca’s pessimism appears to have encrusted itself into every last one of their pores, yet the two warm up (or grow up) rather quickly during the course of the picture. There is little time allotted for this transformation of attitude, and the effect of these two blessedly realistic characters suddenly caring is equal parts confusing and jarring. Maybe Zwigoff temporarily got lost in his own world, since the slight shift in the disposition of these two great characters robs the film of a small portion of its misanthropic powers.
|
|
|
