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| Ghost World |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 111 |
| Public Rating: 9.42 (36 votes) |
Director: Terry Zwigoff |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy |
Year: 2001 |
| Writer(s): Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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I wanted to hug Ghost World, and I was sad to see it end because I enjoyed so much the world that Zwigoff had constructed. The enigmatic ending scene is brilliant, and it does justice to a great movie, but I wanted to go with Enid to see where the bus took her. I don't suppose that gives too much away, since you wouldn't understand unless you saw the film anyway.
Enid and Rebecca are two high-school outcasts who revel in their status. They mock everyone; whether this is a defense mechanism to deal with their rejection by the rest of the students or not is up to you to decide, but I don't think so. In a world of strip malls, homogenized popular music, and superficiality, they are searching for meaning. They don't look awfully hard, though, contenting themselves with harassing their friend Josh at his supermart job and the odd stalking gig. Enid tries so hard to be different that, often, people don't understand what she's going for. There is a precious scene where Rebecca admits that she doesn't understand the origin of Enid's punk costume; Enid changes in disgust.
Enid's anomie leads to her having to re-take a remedial art class. Illeana Douglas is perfect as the super-politicized art teacher who devalues Enid's sketchings in favor of pretentious "art" projects by a brown-nosing fellow student. Douglas presents a priceless video called "Mirror, Father, Mirror" filled with flushing doll parts and blood that sent most of the audience into paroxysms of laughter.
That's one of the great things about this film. All of the leading characters are so well-drawn that they seem real, like people you already know, only funnier. And even the supporting characters, although many of them are simply funny caricatures, have enough of a grain of truth that you laugh even harder because they remind you of people you know. My favorite is this redneck mullet-headed loudmouth who terrorizes the convenience store where Renfro's character works. Someone just like him lived upstairs from me last year.
Enid and Rebecca decide one day to reply to a personals ad written by a lonely record collector, Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi in perhaps the best role of his career. They sit across the diner where they were supposed to meet him, then decide to follow him home. Enid is interested, though, and decides she wants to get to know this shy loser after the fun of the joke wears off. The two of them strike up an odd friendship, he introducing her to classic blues records and she adding a little color to his drab life. Theirs is a touching friendship, and when it develops in a direction that seems almost inexorable, the reactions of both characters to it seem real.
I won't go too much into the specifics. This film is a satire of 1990s angst. Many satires misfire because they make the mistake of looking down on their subject. Zwigoff and Clowes care enough and know enough about Enid and her friends to make the satire that much more biting, and that much less demeaning. I'm not really putting this well. This is one of the best films released so far in 2001, and it's a shame that it showed on so few screens. Rent it as soon as it's available.
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