Ghost World (2001)
Starring Thora Birch, Scarlet Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Bob Balaban, Brad Renfro, Illeanna Douglas.
Directed by Terry Zwigoff.
Rated R.
Grade: A
"Oh my God, we totally have to!"
Ghost World is a movie about teens, but it's not a "teen movie," at least not in the contemporary definition of American Pie and Road Trip. It is, instead, a stunningly observed portrait of adolescence. I want so badly to categorize the movie -- it shows what happens when kids march to their own drummer, it explores the effects of unbridled cynicism -- but a description like that would not do it justice. This, though, is a fair statement: the film pieces together keen character moments to make a perfect, haunting whole.
The source material for this is, oddly enough, a comic book (of the same name; written by Daniel Clowes), which makes for an ironic twist of fate: for all the hubbub about X-Men, Ghost World is the best film adaptation of a comic book. The protagonist is Enid (Thora Birch), who just finished high school and is forced to attend a summer art class because she failed the subject, despite the prodigious talent she displays in her personal sketchbook. But Enid doesn't much care anyway; the girl has long retreated into her own world, where she and her friend Rebecca can make fun of all the conformist "losers" with scathingly sarcastic remarks while remaining isolated from them.
One day they see a personal ad from a guy who had a "moment" with a blonde on an airport shuttle and hopes to rekindle the momentary attraction. So they figure they'll answer, make up a meeting place and watch the miserable "loser" wait, wait some more, and go home. On a spur of the moment, Enid decides to follow him home.
It's hard to describe the nature of Enid's attraction for this loner, who is named Seymour and is played by none other than Steve Buscemi. It's not romance -- she tries to play matchmaker for the guy who hasn't had a date in his life -- and it's not pity. In a bizarre way, one that Rebecca can never understand, she admires him, and his courage to be his own person among a society of conformists.
But Ghost World isn't about anything so simple as "being different." The fact is that, in being different, both Enid and Seymour are profoundly lonely people. It isn't until they find each other -- not in romance, but in friendship -- that they discover some sense of identity and purpose. To be nonconformist for its own sake is pure folly if it doesn't make you happier.
Ghost World has the distinction of being the only film about intelligent teenagers to come out in an obscenely long time. Enid is smart, with a sense of irony and wit, and her biting dismissals of her classmates aren't the mindless insults of a bully but the arrogant invenctives of an intellectual.
This is one of the year's most powerful films, adapted by Clowes himself with genuine, remarkable poignancy instead of manipulative sentimentality. His characters are cynical, but his script most certainly is not. Thora Birch is amazing in a role similar to the American Beauty turn that made her famous; hers is a character that you can identify with rather than just sympathize. And Buscemi, well, when isn't he amazing? Would you believe he's never won an Oscar? Or even a frickin' Golden Globe?
Alas, that same fate is likely for Ghost World itself, which is too "little" and obscure to be noticed by the almighty Academy. So it goes. This is the better, unpretentious version of The Catcher in the Rye that Salinger never wrote.