Ghost
World (2001)
A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl that anyone
whoever considered themselves an outsider can relate
to. A coming-of-age story told in negatives. A coming-of-age
story told in black.
Terry Zwigoff is a genius filmmaker. If you want to
talk about setting a mood using sets and locales, wardrobe
and props, and actors, then you have to talk about Zwigoff.
Certainly drawing on the images and ideals presented
in "Crumb" but, likewise, easily new and totally vivid,
Zwigoff creates a netherworld of an alternative comic
come to life without ever mimicking alt comics or drawing
upon linear black and white images. This film doesn't
pretend to be hip and doesn't want to be cinematic.
It's so unhip as to become massively hip. Zwigoff simply
creates a vast world of character and incident, using
the backdrop of seemingly altered reality (or is it
reality so hopelessly unaltered that it naturally becomes
altered?) and somehow whisks this concoction into one
of the most beautiful, subtle and engrossing films to
come out in 2001.
Thora Birch is perfection here. She looks so real.
I mean, her body is all juts and elbows wrapped in the
most vibrant and bold colors, including black, especially
black, and topped off with the coolest uncool horn-rimmed
glasses to be found. Birch is more than the anti-hero,
she's the anti- female. She comes across as a woman
trapped in a little girls body, with ghastly blobs of
womanly flesh protruding out here and there. She is
anti-femme. She is anti-beautiful. By that I don't mean
that she is manly or masculine. On the contrary, she
is all girl. But it is the most perfect example of teenage
feminine boredom and confusion to be seen in a long
time. She wavers between seeming comfortable and uncomfortable
in her experimental skin. We love her. We identify with
her. She is clumsy and yet graceful, shy yet forward.
She is the teenage girl we all used to be. Well, okay,
a cooler, more interesting, more solidified teenager
than we ever were. But the one we, as adults now, sure
wish we had been. She has it together and yet is exploding
into a thousand different directions. She is so unhip
as to become the most hip.
Likewise, Steve Buscemi is perfect as the anti-man.
Gawky and paunchy, he is a teenage boy trapped in a
man's body. His crooked teeth are horrific yet sensual.
His shaggy thinning hair is sexy yet... well... thinning.
When Birch's Enid and Buscemi's Seymour become friends,
we fall in love with them. They are the anti-couple.
The represent anti-love. Together, they are the only
thing that seems right in the whole wide schism that
is "Ghost World."
Zwigoff is genius at creating this "Ghost World" for
the two to inhabit. This is a world so unreal as to
become too depressingly real. A combination, like the
real world, of ancient artifice and modern facade, a
place where Radio Shack is next to a old record store
that sells nothing but 78's. This is a world as disjointed
as Enid and Seymour are. Birch looks like the only REAL
thing in the world. Without artificial cinematic trickery
or a CGI effect to be seen, Zwigoff creates a universe
inside the real world, this "Ghost World" where nothing
is really as it seems, nothing ever works the way it
really should and no one (but Enid, of course) is willing
to talk about it.
Zwigoff uses multiple supporting characters who carve
out little niches to firm up this idea of a world out
of balance. Illena Douglas is particularly effective
as a high school art teacher who owes as much to Laurie
Anderson as she does every freaky art hippie guru teacher
we ever had in high school in the 70's. Douglas nails
it. It's perfect. She almost seems to emulate Anderson,
like Anderson's slightly ridiculous suburban, middle-class
clone. It's eerie. Meanwhile, Dave Sheridan creates
Doug, a remake/remodel of his short film character "Stewart"
that he shopped around Hollywood for a while. He is
the highlight of the supporting characters. You will
laugh your ass off. Teri Garr gets a small cameo as
a older woman and she looks awful. She nails a particularly
smarmy feeling with her interloper step-mother-to-be
from hell that perfectly encapsulates exactly what it
is that is making Birch's Enid loose touch with reality.
Bob Balaban, likewise, is particularly effective as
Enid's milquetoast father without going over-the-top
as he has often done in the past. David Cross is likewise
kept under a boil so that only the most perfectly icky
parts of his typical caricature is utilized. Meanwhile,
Brad Renfro has nothing to do and co- star Scarlett
Johansson ("The Horse Whisperer") is locked into a cool
role that soon becomes thankless. Needless to say, both
these young thespians have a supporting job to do and
they do so admirably. Birch's Enid becomes much more
whole and vivid thanks to their performances.
"Ghost World" is based on a alt comic by Daniel Clowes.
Often that originating source shines through Zwigoff's
film like a vast mast propelling the film and allowing
us to ease into the comfortable, leisurely story. At
first the film seems nothing but a collection of vignettes
based around the boredom of suburban life for intelligent,
interesting teenage girls. It's a film without real
angst where Birch and Johansson's characters seem completely
rounded and content in their quest to somehow be different
in their inordinately normal world. But as the film
evolves and the characters develop, Birch's Enid comes
to see the world she exists in crack and crumble. And,
like one at the precipice of adulthood, she comes to
question everything in her directionless life. It's
a brilliant and wonderfully real portrayal of that time
in life when choices must be made and some innocence
must be lost. The "Ghost World" is the little cocoon
of innocent kicks and teenage boredom that Enid exists
in when the film begins. Throughout the film, the supernatural
world begins to be stripped away and Enid finds herself
confronted with an even more terrifying prospect: How
to remain true to herself and exist in the real world.
It's a riddle that many of us outsiders have had to
answer.
Notes:
Also with Ezra Buzzington and Bruce Glover (Crispin's
father).
One of the producers is John Malkovich.
Music by David Kitay. Several unique and interesting
tunes are used in the soundtrack from Memphis Minnie
to the Buzzcocks.
Cinematography by Affonso Beato
Filmed in LA.
Lots of alternative artwork and alt comics images
appear in the film. Many artists are thanked in the
end credits for contributing their work.
"Crumb" inside joke: One scene has Enid coming to
Seymour, who sells old records at garage sales, and
asking him about some albums in his stock. She pulls
out a record jacket with artwork by Robert Crumb and
the artist's name appears to be R. Crumb and his Band.
When Enid asks if the record is any good, Seymour responds,
"Not really."
There is an outtakes scene after the credits.
At one time, Clowes worked for "Cracked" magazine.
|
Report
Card
Script:
A+
Acting: A+
Cinematography\Lighting: A+
Special Effects\Make Up:A+
Music: A+
Final
Grade: A+
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