So, I randomly decided to rewatch Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World last night since it's on the Criterion Channel. Five minutes in, I knew I had to allot a special review just to this dark, hilarious, depressing masterpiece.
Ghost World is a movie that takes me right back to late high school/early college. A time where I was technically an adult, but still a naive baby. I loved cinema, I thought I was smarter than everyone else, despite the fact that I, to paraphrase Cher Horowitz, was a virgin who was too scared to drive on highways. Ghost World really speaks to the precocious and naive among us. As Enid and Rebecca move beyond high school--a mini-universe that allows them to gloat about being better than everyone else--to the real world, they are faced with the tough realities that actually no one is special and making fun of people doesn't feel all that good in the end.
For those who haven't seen Ghost World or read the graphic novel by Dan Clowes, it's a pretty simple plot: Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are best friends who graduate high school. They don't plan to go to college. Enid is one part hipster, one part punk, and two parts clearly depressed. Rebecca could be called "basic", but of the two she's more prepared to grow up, find a job, and become an adult.
Enid and Rebecca see an ad in the personals and decide to do the early-aughts version of catfishing: they call the guy who placed the ad and pretend to be the blonde he "had a moment" with. Then they wait and spy on the poor guy as he shows up at the restaurant and drinks a milkshake by himself before leaving. This is Seymour, a sad forty-something (or thirty-something? Steve Buscemi plays Seymour and the dude was born looking old so who knows how old this character is) whose main joy in life is collecting old blues and jazz records.
Despite the catfishing incident, Enid makes tentative steps to befriend Seymour. She buys a blues record from him and ends up loving it. The closer she gets to Seymour, the more she pushes Rebecca away.
But Ghost World isn't a romance and it isn't a happy movie. There are a lot of different messages to take away from the film. It's about the limits of non-conformity. It's about how life goes on whether you decide to participate or not. It's about how people who are hurt hurt other people, even if they ultimately feel shitty doing it. In short: it's a very misanthropic film that also captures some very true (if not flattering) realities about people. People are selfish, confused, lonely. People who are outsiders still think they're better than other outsiders.
In short, 20 year old Jenny was like "inject that shit right into my veeeeiiinnnns".
But there is a lot of beautiful moments in Ghost World as well: the opening sequence where Enid dances along to a wacky Bollywood movie. The dude with the nun-chucks who hangs out at the local convenience mart and says shit like "It's America, dude, learn the rules!" (I thought this was the funniest/best line in the movie back in college...still do). Josh, the sweet guy Enid and Rebecca like to tease--played by Brad Renfro, a promising actor who died too young. The CLOTHES everyone wears.
Ghost World, in my opinion, holds up twenty years later. Despite the fact that we have Tinder instead of personal ads, smartphones instead of the landlines Enid and Rebecca use, and that Thora Birch has fallen off the face of the earth while ScarJo is a superstar (a fucking crime, in my opinion), we still live in Ghost World. And even though I am no longer a virgin, no longer scared to drive on highways, and only *somewhat* think I'm better/smarter than others, Ghost World speaks to the person I am deep down inside--something essential that hasn't changed in 20 years. And if you're a fan of this film, I think you'll find that it still accurately reflects the sick, sad, yet beautiful world we live in.
Grade: A+
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