*** (out of ****)
Starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Brad Renfro, Bob Balaban, Teri Garr, and Ileana Douglas.
Directed by Terry Zwigoff, written for the screen by Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes, from the comic book by Clowes.
2001 R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2001
“Ghost World” is a good movie about annoying people. I didn’t laugh once during the first half hour, although I think I was supposed to, because it wasn’t until the arrival of Steve Buscemi that any of the characters became sympathetic. Before Buscemi’s appearance, “Ghost World” follows two teenage girls fresh from graduating high school, that roam around aimlessly while feeling superior to everyone around them. That they (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) think of themselves as more “adult” and “sophisticated” than those around them is pathetic. They dress almost like prostitutes, and would pass for such if not for their posture and their slack-jawed contempt for everything around them; two mouth-breathers who are perpetually on the verge of boredom because they won’t deign to let anything seem good enough to interest them. They giggle about strangers at a restaurant; they regard as “cool” an airhead who plays his stereo at full blast in the parking lot of a convenience store because it bothers the store’s owner; they visit a video rental store but decree that everything in its stock “sucks;” and they play a trick on a man they find in a personal ad.
But perhaps I have misrepresented this first portion of “Ghost World” in making it sound like spiteful little people doing spiteful little things. “Ghost World” is first and foremost one of the year’s best character studies, focusing on the kind of people who are usually only represented in film as one-dimensional caricatures who trot on screen just long enough to say something stupid and be ridiculed. The film shows them as human beings as fascinating as the rest of us, and “Ghost World’s” strength is that it neither condemns nor praises its two heroines. It certainly admires some aspects of their individuality, but it shows them as they are, and does not shy away from showing the damage that their selfishness causes. For example: Thora Birch is fired from a job at a movie theater in day; a lesser movie would have shown her being fired for dressing in a “free-spirited” manner, or for being “an individual,” and while she does that in “Ghost World,” she’s fired because she essentially insults the customers and degrades the theater. Also, a lesser movie would have been satisfied with showing her behavior, whereas “Ghost World” is curious to discover why she is so hostile.
The movie hits its stride with the arrival of Steve Buscemi as the man from the personal ads. He is a sort of grown-up version of the two girls, although with frumpy slacks and shirts instead of the girls’ outlandish attire, and with much more contempt aimed at himself. He has a good job but little human connection and spends most of his free time collecting old blues and ragtime recordings. That this free-spirit is alone upsets Birch and she sets out to find him a mate. The film’s best scenes belong to Buscemi, as he shows us that loving yourself may be a lifelong romance, but hating yourself can be more fun.
The stories of Birch, Johansson, and Buscemi aren’t so much plotted as threaded together. Both girls decide to bypass college, but while Johansson gets a job and starts apartment hunting, Birch regards responsibility and fending for her own food to be dreadfully uncool. To technically graduate, Birch takes a summer art course from another grown-up version of herself (Ileana Douglas). The teacher, with her rhetoric-babble about political and self-expressive art strikes Birch as offensive. A weaker film would have surely shown Birch at home with the other “free-spirits,” but “Ghost World” knows she wants to hold everyone in contempt. Buscemi does find a woman interested in him, but her mainstream and conventional tendencies make him uneasy. And Birch is in a state of perpetual shame over her father (“Gosford Park’s” Bob Balaban, in another wonderfully wimpy performance), who is so uncool she can hardly look at him. These storylines come together, mostly because of Birch’s selfish doing, and unfold because of who the characters are, and not for outrageous plot manipulation like in a lesser movie like “American Pie.”
Birch and Johansson were born to play these roles, and director Terry Zwigoff has directed this material in a superior fashion than most films about high school and college. His shots, possibly owing to their comic source, are well-composed and feature a very revealing color scheme. The “any-town U.S.A.” where “Ghost World” is set is all concrete and clean, with wide streets and wide lawns, where the outlandish colors worn by Birch and Johansson jump out the most, while Buscemi’s apartment and wardrobe display more shades of brown than I thought possible.
Reaching the end of this review I realize how damning I have been of the characters played by Birch and Johansson. Yes they are selfish, yes they are cruel, and yes their rebellion is against those who tastes differ from theirs and is not in any real sense moral. But “Ghost World” serves as a reminder that maybe too many people listen to banal Top 40 pop rock instead of bluegrass or Joplin rags, Blockbuster doesn’t have all the great movies, and that grown-up formal attire is no less ridiculous and arbitrary than what goth people wear. Perhaps conventional fashion is even more asinine than what the girls wear because it masquerades as being “a necessity.” At the end of the film, Johansson has found an apartment and makes a steady paycheck. We want her to be less selfish, cruel, and arrogant, but at the same time we don’t want her to forget to be different. Sometimes we need to fit in, but we sometimes we don’t.
Finished February 28, 2002.
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night