I first saw Ghost World when it was on limited release in the UK in 2001 - I didn't know much about the film at all before I saw it, but I liked the posters that appeared on the Underground station where I worked at the time, and so I showed up at the cinema expecting a typical teen comedy. What I got was completely unexpected, and nearly eleven years later, I'm still utterly obsessed with this wonderful and pretty much unique film. I saw it four times in the cinema, and have seen it several times since - and every time, it delights me and something new strikes me.
It's an adaptation from a Daniel Clowes comic of the same name, and follows school friends Enid and Rebecca as they graduate from high school and attempt to find their way in the world. The comic is a masterpiece of observational dark comedy, and the film adaptation is different in some ways, adding a couple of elements to connect together some rather disjointed aspects of the comic. Enid's art class and the character of Seymour are absent in the comic, but their presence works well in the film and does give it more of a narrative structure, something that is needed with a film.
Let me just say that I fell in love with Enid right from the start, even though she isn't a sympathetic character in a lot of ways. She can be snide, sarcastic, rude, inconsistent, unreliable and flaky, and is all these things in various quantities throughout the film. Still, there's something intelligent and independent about her, despite her struggles with alienation, insecurity, depression and loneliness. All the way through the film, she struggles to find something authentic and real in a rather fake and shallow world. Whilst at school, she was close friends with Rebecca, but after they leave, they gradually drift apart, and Rebecca seems content to take a conventional path. Enid's world rather painfully falls apart, which is touching, sad and poignant to watch.
Enid and Rebecca are played to perfection by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johannson, but Enid IS this film - Thora's performance is just perfect and she gets everything right. The script is amazing as well. Enid and Rebecca's world is populated by a wonderful selection of freaks and misfits who are all both funny and tragic at the same time, and some of my favourites include the awesomely pretentious art teacher ("mirror, father, mirror"), Doug at the convenience store ("you have to buy me dinner first!") and Melorra, the girl who desperately tries to befriend Enid and Rebecca but fails dismally.
The cinematography is spot-on and the film is bursting with colour, which works really well despite the bleak tone some of it takes. The pace is slow and at times it's hard to feel that much is actually happening, and some people intensely dislike the film for this reason, but if you keep your eyes open, you'll observe a huge amount of fantastic detail in the film, which is all a razor-sharp observation on alienation and the nature of the world we live in. The sets are very convincing and Enid's bedroom in particular is done to perfection, closely resembling the rooms of many of my friends when I was in my teens.
You'll either like Enid or hate her, and if you can't sympathise or empathise with her, there's not much in this film for you and you'll be better off elsewhere. It's one of the film's awesome strengths that the characters are so complex - I've always really disliked films where the goodies and baddies are very obvious right from the start, and where everything is neat and tidy. It's left to the viewer to decide who the heroes and villains of the piece are, and that's enough to provoke endless discussion. It's a film that's full of ambiguity, and the end is far from neat and tidy, but that is, I feel, very much what the book and film set out to do - show us that life is often ambiguous, vague and not how we expect it to be. The ending, in particular, diverges enormously from typical teen movies and there's no romantic end where Enid gets her man, and there's no place at college or dream job. In fact, the ending has been the source of constant debate since the film was released, as it could be viewed in a number of ways.
(WARNING - SPOILERS) I won't go into too much detail, as you should see the ending for yourself without me giving too much away, but Enid effectively leaves town for an uncertain future. That's the literal interpretation. A commonly-held view is that the ending is a metaphor for suicide, and that Enid kills herself. I don't think this is the view of the author or director, and it's certainly not a view I hold myself, as that would be too awful and ghastly to contemplate. I see the ending as an attempt at a new start, and my own feeling is that there *is* a place in this world for Enid somewhere, and that she's going to find it, after a long struggle. The comic alludes to this more than the film does. However you choose to view it, though, the ending is challenging and can be hard to deal with, but finishes off this clever, funny and thought-provoking film in fine style.
Possibly one of the greatest films about adolescence we will ever see.
It's an adaptation from a Daniel Clowes comic of the same name, and follows school friends Enid and Rebecca as they graduate from high school and attempt to find their way in the world. The comic is a masterpiece of observational dark comedy, and the film adaptation is different in some ways, adding a couple of elements to connect together some rather disjointed aspects of the comic. Enid's art class and the character of Seymour are absent in the comic, but their presence works well in the film and does give it more of a narrative structure, something that is needed with a film.
Let me just say that I fell in love with Enid right from the start, even though she isn't a sympathetic character in a lot of ways. She can be snide, sarcastic, rude, inconsistent, unreliable and flaky, and is all these things in various quantities throughout the film. Still, there's something intelligent and independent about her, despite her struggles with alienation, insecurity, depression and loneliness. All the way through the film, she struggles to find something authentic and real in a rather fake and shallow world. Whilst at school, she was close friends with Rebecca, but after they leave, they gradually drift apart, and Rebecca seems content to take a conventional path. Enid's world rather painfully falls apart, which is touching, sad and poignant to watch.
Enid and Rebecca are played to perfection by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johannson, but Enid IS this film - Thora's performance is just perfect and she gets everything right. The script is amazing as well. Enid and Rebecca's world is populated by a wonderful selection of freaks and misfits who are all both funny and tragic at the same time, and some of my favourites include the awesomely pretentious art teacher ("mirror, father, mirror"), Doug at the convenience store ("you have to buy me dinner first!") and Melorra, the girl who desperately tries to befriend Enid and Rebecca but fails dismally.
The cinematography is spot-on and the film is bursting with colour, which works really well despite the bleak tone some of it takes. The pace is slow and at times it's hard to feel that much is actually happening, and some people intensely dislike the film for this reason, but if you keep your eyes open, you'll observe a huge amount of fantastic detail in the film, which is all a razor-sharp observation on alienation and the nature of the world we live in. The sets are very convincing and Enid's bedroom in particular is done to perfection, closely resembling the rooms of many of my friends when I was in my teens.
You'll either like Enid or hate her, and if you can't sympathise or empathise with her, there's not much in this film for you and you'll be better off elsewhere. It's one of the film's awesome strengths that the characters are so complex - I've always really disliked films where the goodies and baddies are very obvious right from the start, and where everything is neat and tidy. It's left to the viewer to decide who the heroes and villains of the piece are, and that's enough to provoke endless discussion. It's a film that's full of ambiguity, and the end is far from neat and tidy, but that is, I feel, very much what the book and film set out to do - show us that life is often ambiguous, vague and not how we expect it to be. The ending, in particular, diverges enormously from typical teen movies and there's no romantic end where Enid gets her man, and there's no place at college or dream job. In fact, the ending has been the source of constant debate since the film was released, as it could be viewed in a number of ways.
(WARNING - SPOILERS) I won't go into too much detail, as you should see the ending for yourself without me giving too much away, but Enid effectively leaves town for an uncertain future. That's the literal interpretation. A commonly-held view is that the ending is a metaphor for suicide, and that Enid kills herself. I don't think this is the view of the author or director, and it's certainly not a view I hold myself, as that would be too awful and ghastly to contemplate. I see the ending as an attempt at a new start, and my own feeling is that there *is* a place in this world for Enid somewhere, and that she's going to find it, after a long struggle. The comic alludes to this more than the film does. However you choose to view it, though, the ending is challenging and can be hard to deal with, but finishes off this clever, funny and thought-provoking film in fine style.
Possibly one of the greatest films about adolescence we will ever see.
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