In a sentenceBeing eighteen is exhausting when everyone else’s taste is your responsibility
Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are teenage friends who share a dismissive view of the suburban life around them. Other people’s tastes, habits and ambitions give them plenty to talk about, and judging them together helps the pair feel less alone. But their friendship also involves questions of loyalty and control, as each faces the prospect of adulthood. Enid’s growing interest in Seymour (Steve Buscemi), an older outsider, adds another complication. Terry Zwigoff’s comedy-drama follows the girls as their impatience with conformity meets people whose lives are harder to dismiss than their appearances.
Terry Zwigoff’s sharply funny comedy takes teenage discontent seriously without excusing its cruelty. Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi make the loneliness hurt, though the unhurried pace occasionally gives us too much time to appreciate the point.
Ghost World is a funny, uncomfortable film about the pleasure of deciding that everyone else is dreadful. Terry Zwigoff lets us enjoy that pleasure long enough to understand why Enid and Rebecca rely on it, then asks us to look again at the people they dismiss. We recommend it warmly, with a warning that its slow pace sometimes turns a good joke into a prolonged inspection. The girls’ intelligence makes them entertaining company even when their judgements are indefensible.
Thora Birch plays Enid as someone who has worked hard at being difficult and would struggle to stop. The contempt is funny because Birch gives it conviction: she never seems to be waiting for permission to say the unpleasant thing. Daniel Clowes and Zwigoff’s screenplay understands how shared dislikes can keep a friendship busy while leaving important questions untouched. With Scarlett Johansson’s Rebecca, the little contests over who gets to be right matter as much as the jokes. The writing lets us sense how tiring such a friendship might become.
Johansson deserves particular credit for making Rebecca more than an audience for Enid. There is a difference in the way the two young women carry their dissatisfaction, and neither performance explains it away for our convenience. When the girls are together, Johansson gives Rebecca enough resistance to keep Birch’s forcefulness from deciding the meaning of every exchange. The film’s attention to this unequal partnership is more persuasive than its broader complaints about suburbia.
Steve Buscemi’s Seymour complicates Enid’s belief that she can judge people at a glance. He is an older outsider, and Buscemi makes the discomfort of that position matter more than its comic usefulness. We were surprised by how sad we felt for him. His awkwardness looks exhausting to live with, and the performance makes us reluctant to enjoy the jokes at his expense. The connection between him and Enid gives Birch room to show curiosity beneath the practised disapproval.
Affonso Beato photographs the suburban surroundings with a neatness that makes their dreariness worse. Edward T. McAvoy’s production design gives ordinary places a slightly exaggerated, cartoon-like look, well suited to characters who see so much to object to. The care in these images helps us understand Enid’s impatience without requiring us to share every judgement. Zwigoff makes these places interesting to look at even when we can understand why the girls would rather be somewhere else.
The editing by Michael R. Miller and Carole Kravetz Aykanian allows the discomfort time to register, though some scenes keep going after it has registered quite sufficiently. At 111 minutes, the film has stretches where the dry delivery begins to feel too uniform. David Kitay’s music contributes to the sadness without making it oppressive. The larger reservation is Zwigoff’s tendency to linger over the drabness surrounding these people when the performers have already made their dissatisfaction clear.
Coming-of-age comedies often make being an outsider look rather comfortable. Ghost World allows Enid to be funny and perceptive without pretending that either quality makes her good at friendship. Its sympathy extends to people she has not bothered to understand, and that is where it becomes moving. Give it a quiet evening, when Buscemi’s hesitations will not have to compete with a conversation.
Most critics like Ghost World, and the praise gathers in the same places: the dryness of its comedy, its picture of suburban boredom, and the acting. Thora Birch’s Enid is singled out again and again, and Steve Buscemi’s Seymour, the older misfit she takes up with, gets almost as much attention. Several reviewers note how well Zwigoff carries the comic’s episodic rhythm onto the screen, and how the film finds real sadness under the girls’ sarcasm rather than simply letting them sneer at everyone in sight.
The reservations are few and do not cluster. Sight and Sound finds the ending too neat; Empire thinks the film easier to admire than to warm to at first. The one outright dissent comes from Screen Daily, which calls the direction flat and the pace slack, while still crediting Birch and Johansson. Reviews written a decade or more later are among the warmest, and say the film has not aged.
The critic calls it a heartbreaking, mysterious, and hilarious tribute to misfits that hasn't aged, singling out its profound look at dying friendship.
Read the full review →The critic praises the film as the best depiction of teenage eccentricity since Rushmore and a sharp satire of boredom and conformity. He singles out the adaptation's tighter narrative and the cast's vivid portrayal of loneliness and disaffection.
Read the full review →Peter Bradshaw calls it one of the funniest, most lugubrious and saddest films of the year. He singles out the odd, touching love affair between Enid and the older man Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi, for particular praise.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film a sophisticated and original take on teen angst, praising its sharp humour, subtle observations of consumerism and characters, and strong performances, though noting it's more admirable than immediately appealing.
Read the full review →The critic calls the film a singularly unsettling portrait of a culture in the grip of the mediocre and a disquieting consciousness-raiser about a rapidly disintegrating world. He singles out the way it digs beneath the surface of suburban America to show Enid's acute sense of all that is wrong.
Read the full review →Viewers will delight in the film's deadpan wit, softly layered details and deft portrait of suburban anomie. It adeptly evokes the unbearable dullness of being 18 and the precarious power play of female friendship, though the ending feels pat.
Read the full review →
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