Ghost World
Ghost World on DVD |
Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett
Johansson) are graduating from high school. Ultrahip and above it all, they stand apart
from their classmates, offering a sardonic running commentary on the world's lameness and
phoniness. They're convinced they're being ironic, but the true irony is that they're the
only people in the room who are not having fun.
In the days that follow, Enid and Rebecca wander aimlessly
about town, mocking everyone and everything they see. Enid uses her look -- the way she
dresses and the way she wears her hair -- as a way to rebuke everything she sees. Nobody
gets it: when she sarcastically adopts a '70s punk persona,
everyone just assumes she's 20 years out of date.
Bored and mischievous, she answers a personal ad in the
local paper, making a date with a socially inept record collector (Steve Buscemi) simply
so she can watch his growing realization he has been stood up. It turns out to be
essentially what he expected from life and, disappointed by his dignity and composure,
Enid and Rebecca follow him home.
Seymour, the collector, fascinates Enid. She manages to
meet him at a yard sale and buys a record from him. She plays it out of boredom and
discovers Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman." She confronts Seymour the next day:
"Where can I find more records like that?"
"Ah," Seymour responds, "There are no other
records like that. Not really."
Rebecca can't follow Enid into her fascination with
Seymour. She's impatient with being too hip for the room -- she just wants to get an
apartment and get on with her life. "I just get tired of all the losers and
creeps," she tells Enid.
"But those are our people," Enid chirps.
"No. No, they're not," Rebecca sighs.
This is Ghost World, a film by Terry Zwigoff based
on a comic by Daniel Clowes. Zwigoff directed the documentary Crumb, so he's no
stranger to the world of adult sequential narrative art -- the term some artists and
writers use to distinguish their work from the super-hero soap operas that represent the
entire comic book genre to some folks.
Clowes, like a handful of other creative artists such as
Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Scott McCloud, Art Spiegelman, and Jason
Lutes, has attempted to achieve a literate and compelling literature that fuses drawing
with storytelling. His Ghost World series, which came out chapter by chapter in Eightball,
managed to work as social satire, character study, and coming of age saga (both for Enid
and for Clowes, as an artist). Clowes described his tale as "the lives of two recent
high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable
eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize
microbes in his petri dish."
This stance is one that Zwigoff has captured perfectly. At
first, it almost appears as though Zwigoff's affection for Enid threatens the film's
equilibrium -- to any well-rounded adult, Enid's pose and pranks seem tiresome and mean.
One of the film's greatest pleasures is Thora Birch's performance. She makes us care about
Enid by letting us glimpse her fear of her own vapidity as she adopts her "don't
care" stance.
Enid's fascination with Seymour blossoms into something
akin to friendship. Seymour is self-aware enough to know he's no catch, but he's hungry
for human contact. Enid decides to find him a girlfriend. "Now tell me," she
says, "what are your interests?"
"I don't want to meet someone who shares my
interests," Seymour insists. "I hate my interests."
Seymour is a career high point for Steve Buscemi. Seymour
is intensely intelligent, but only marginally socialized. Even when he's trying hard to
get along, he can't help being tactlessly precise. Buscemi, best known for his twitchy,
eye-bugging portrayals of weird character types, tones everything down for Seymour. He
under-acts, if anything, and we are drawn in, just as we move closer to someone who is
whispering. Buscemi's Seymour is almost heroic in his passion to connect, to have a real
human relationship rather than limp along trading arcane data on obscure blues singers
with other collectors.
The entire film is populated with marvelous performances.
Ileana Douglas portrays an art teacher who finds craft far less important than the meaning
assigned to a piece of art. The fact that Enid draws wonderful caricatures actually seems
to offend her, whereas the bullshit "conceptual" pieces offered by Enid's
classmates are extravagantly praised.
Teri Garr, as Enid's father's once-and-future significant other, is also
brilliant. For the first time I can recall, Garr has jettisoned her ironic
self-detachment and simply acted. She should try it more often; she's quite good at
it.
For a while, it looks as though Ghost World will be
content to simply meander from one encounter to another, like a slightly slicker Slacker.
But Clowes and Zwigoff are after bigger game and the characters actually grow -- both grow
up and grow apart.
I don't want to give away much about the ending except to
say that its biggest triumph is the way it avoids tying everything up in a neat little
bundle. Instead, after nearly two hours of piling one prosaic detail upon another, Ghost
World turns ineffably lyrical, like an American form of magical realism.
There were times during the film when I didn't know what to
think of it. My wife was unable to develop any sympathy for Enid and Rebecca and left long
before the end. I couldn't get the film out of my head, however, and I walked around for
weeks after viewing it, asking people if they'd seen it and begging the ones who had to
tell me what they thought of it.
But I ended up caring deeply about Enid and Seymour and
even the art teacher and Enid's schlub of a father. They seemed quite real to me.
Ghost World illustrates one of the great things
about DVD. The movie had only limited distribution. I was aware of it while it was in
theaters but never quite made it below Canal Street during its run. Thanks to DVD, I'm
able to see it and even revisit it to see if it was, ultimately, as good as I thought.
It is -- it's far better than I would have realized from a
single viewing. That's another advantage of the disc over the first-run film. It's a very
good DVD, too, which helps -- the transfer is impeccable, although there's not much sound
coming out of the surrounds. But who cares?
What distinguishes Ghost World is its intelligent
storytelling, phenomenal acting, and its reflection of the pains and glories of real life.
I can't answer for you, but that's more than enough for me.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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