Ghost World Review
by Karina Montgomery (cinerina AT flash DOT net)September 1st, 2001
Ghost World
Rental
I should say up front, my companions were highly unsatisfied with this movie. I myself did not think it was the greatest cinematic work ever projected, but I enjoyed the dialogue and the dynamic (slow to come and unresolved) between Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. Buscemi is a wildly underappreciated actor, and he has Seymour, a great character, to play with in this movie. Enid (Thora Birch) and her friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are disaffected teens newly graduated from high school, looking for&something. Rebecca is organized, beautiful, self-confident, and thankfully has little patience for wafflers. Enid has made a career of belittling those around her for her amusement and embracing the truly absurd, which appears to be a purposeful outing of herself from "normal society" when, at the same time, she longs to belong. Their resultant personalities are the natural by-product of their divergent experiences.
Director Terry Zwigoff is no stranger to oddballs or slow films -- he did the interesting but poky Crumb, and it should be noted how Crumb fits into this film as well. It is slow, there are no literal ghosts (one of my companions was concerned it was a horror movie) and it is definitely not the wacky comedy it is marketed to be. However, Buscemi fans should enjoy getting him to simultaneously be creepy and adorable, hopelessly nerdy and subtly cool, and generally an interesting blend of self-deprecation and haughty disgust at Other People. Illeana Douglas gave me a lot of laughs as one of those art teachers who takes self-expression past accessible into absurd, and cannot reward any effort that is not "deep." Enid's character, so fervent about being the unusual one, feels forced to be so by this teacher, and it's another interesting dynamic, one that again I had some personal experience with which to appreciate it.
I think we all have a phase we go through where we wrestle between thinking we are above everything/everyone and thinking we are worth completely nothing; admittedly, most of the time, this does occur concurrently with general teen angst, so it gets lost in the shuffle as a separate struggle. My self-esteem did not remotely begin to blossom until my late 20's, and arguably has yet to bloom (despite the arrogant conceit of writing movie reviews -- like I could do better?), so I appreciated the screenwriter's portrayal of the dichotomy. Enid seems to have been raised exclusively by her father, as was I, and I am certain that there are elements that spoke to me and not my fellow moviegoers.
However, I must note that all three of my companions are improvisers who I fervently admire, and whose personal struggles with ego and whatnot have surely occurred so long ago that they have forgotten the horrible balancing act that was being played out on screen by these accomplished actors. My intelligent, self-assured, and artistically sensitive companions felt that the acting was one-note and flat, and they didn't find anyone sympathetic. I found characters sympathetic by recognizing myself and some of my friends within them. So we're both right, as far as gleaning a recommendation for this film, or not. Basically, if you find searching for one's own sense of self exhausting or passé, then skip this film altogether. Otherwise, if you're still struggling as I am, you might dig it. If you love Steve Buscemi (as all people should) you will, at least, appreciate his work. I didn't love this movie, but on some level I really connected with it. Maybe you will too. But you can find out by renting it.
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These reviews (c) 2001 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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