Ghost World Review
by Tim Wick
Ghost World needs you, the viewer, to do one thing. It needs you to
remember what it was like the summer after you graduated high school.
You shouldn't remember it with a glossy John Hughes sheen over it. No,
ignore the quirky, comic pal I know we ALL had. Ignore the less than
perfect best friend of the opposite gender we were too stupid to realize was
perfect for us. Ignore the fact that being an outcast still meant we looked
like Molly Ringwald or John Cusack. I love those movies for what they are -
but they don't have anything to do with what it was like, do they?
I'd like to think that most of us remember that time as a sort of
manic-depressive time where we rejoiced that we were finally through with
high school even as we despaired at what was supposed to come next. Once we
were free from the confines of the classroom we were dreadfully clueless on
what we were supposed to do next. Some of us looked to prolong the familiar
by going to college. We had other reasons that we told everyone: our
parents wanted us to, it was to help us get a better career, etc.
But what we really wanted to do was find some sort of middle ground between
complete restriction and complete freedom. Freedom is, as a matter of fact,
rather scary.
So we spent time in college convincing ourselves we were smarter than anyone
who wasn't a friend of ours. We laughed at ourselves because we were
certain that our parents had no idea what we meant when we called them
pedantic (unimaginative, pedestrian - you can look it up). They knew full
well what pedantic meant and they were looking at a fine example.
Our parents were teenagers too and like it or not, they hadn't forgotten
what it was like. Every time we rolled our eyes at them because they just
didn't get it, they secretly rolled their eyes back because they sure as
hell did.
Ghost World is about a girl living out that awkward transition from child to
adult. She is smarter than the people around her, but that could just be
because all teenagers think they are smarter than the people around her. As
the movie progresses, she moves from the relief of being freed from High
School to the realization that she doesn't know what comes next. That she
thought she did makes the situation that much more scary.
Thora Birch plays Enid, a sarcastic underachiever who's only goal in life
seems to be finding a way to avoid it. Birch's career is an interesting one
given the great performances in this film and American Beauty that neatly
sandwich the movie she clearly did for a paycheck - Dungeons and Dragons.
While her ability to play a depressed teenager was not in dispute, she
manages to give a lot of facets to Enid. Enid has a wry sense of humor and
is capable of enjoying herself when she is not trying to figure out what she
really wants out of life. Because she doesn't know, she is at odds with her
oldest friend, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson). Rebecca knows what she wants
and doesn't understand why Enid seems reticent to want it as well.
Then Enid meets Seymour (Steve Buchemi). Seymour is an older man who in
many ways is the person we all fear we will turn in to. He is alone,
working at a boring job and only too aware of what an awkward person he is.
Enid thinks he's cool because he's not like everyone else. He's not cool -
not in the sense we consider cool.
But he's like most of us, so we are happy to know that being a nerdy record
collector could be cool to someone. Strangely, he is very similar to Enid
in that he still hasn't figured out how to join the human race. He is an
observer of the world around him, either too afraid or too awkward to
participate. That Enid wants to help him join the human race is a twist of
irony given how uncomfortable she is around other people.
The great thing about all this underlying angst is that it's layered with a
good dose of comedy. These characters may know they are drifting, but they
are certainly right in their opinion that no-one else has much of a clue
either. Enid most especially has a unique and funny take on the world that
makes you wait for her to voice her only too perfect observations about the
world around her.
I liked this movie because it spoke not only to the person I was then, but
the person I am now. It is the saddest irony of all that we spend most of
our lives figuring out what we don't like to do and very little of it
figuring out what we actually enjoy. We spend our high school years hating
high school only to discover that the alternative might not really have been
any better. Seymour knows this and Enid is beginning to recognize this.
Both finally realize that the best answer to learning we don't like
something is to stop doing it.
This film is one of the first teen angst films that speaks to adults. It
forces us to remember what we went through then and to realize that we
haven't really come all that far since. We are also reminded that we would
do better to not take life so seriously and every now and again it's okay to
do something just because we enjoy it.
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