Tuesday 25 January 2011

Ghost World



"Everyone's too stupid."
One of the things that has always fascinated me most about Terry Zwigoff's adaptation of Daniel Clowes' comic is how the movie grows with you - I probably saw it the first time years before actually graduating from high school, and thought that I completely understood the significance of the movie purely from my identification with its cynical main character. I've re-watched it several times after now, and each time I've found something else, a new meaning, a scene that I'd disregarded before because I hadn't have the experiences to understand them yet (like Enid's sudden nostalgia when she looks at a class mate during their graduation party, realizing that she will never see him again because school is all they ever had in common).
Ghost World tackles loads of issues subtly and it does so with immaculate grace. It's a movie about the objects we choose to surround ourselves with, from which we hope to gain meaning even though they really mostly weigh us down to a particular place or to an identity that we'd have otherwise long discarded. It's about a sort of forgotten city that is slowly becoming buried under a corporate idea of authenticity (the "authentic Fifties Diner", the video store that doesn't have 8 1/2 by Fellini, the art teacher who doesn't recognize talent because her perspective is too skewed by ideology, a corporation, hiding its racist past behind a new polished image) which despite the fact that Enid, the main character, observes the process with an acrid sense of humour, is a disheartenly frustrating. It's about the question of authenticity, and a quest for something true and meaningful in a world that seems to value other things.
It is easier to define yourself over what you hate or intensely dislike than over positive things, and Enid (Thora Birch) learns that life lesson the hard way. She is stuck between her own high expectations of herself and her unwillingness to meet other people's interpretation of what it means to be a grown-up, and a deep sense of alienation that comes with a longing for something real in her life, something authentic that hasn't been commodified yet.
Enid meets a very unlikely new friend, Seymour (Steve Buscemi), who obsessively collects records ("You think it's healthy to obsessively collect things? You can't connect with other people so you fill your life with stuff... I'm just like every other one of these pathetic collector losers.") and is like an aged version of her, a person that can't relate to 99 per cent of humanity and has stopped trying ("He is the exact opposite of everything I hate."). One of the things Ghost World captures perfectly is this feeling of disconnect from your old friends (and, along with that, dreams and ambitions) once you meet new people that change your outlook on life: Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson in an early role), Enid's high school friend and the person she relied on to make her own perspective seem less lonesome, slowly realizes that her friend is changing into a different person, someone whose biggest ambition isn't getting a badly paid job and a cheap apartment any more - and meanwhile, Rebecca has a job at a coffee shop and her perspective changes too, from their shared interest and fascination with weird and odd people to one that is more conformist.
Ghost World is about this intense period of time in which people make many of the decisions that will shape their lives, and discover that it is sometimes a painful process to figure out yourself a little bit better because it means leaving behind things you used to love.

2001, directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, starring Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro, Ileana Douglas, Bob Balaban.

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