It’s sort of a rite of passage of being a teenager that
you think you’ve got the world figured out, have everyone’s number, and believe
your own views to be absolutely right. I suppose it takes most people until
sometime in early adulthood to realize that you didn’t know half of what you
thought you did when you were seventeen. Some teenagers (I might have been one
of them) take it a step further and believe there is an authentic way of living
and that just about everyone walking this earth is a big phony. Think Holden
Caulfield. It should suggest something important that he was my hero at fifteen
and then a sad tragedy at thirty.
Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 film Ghost World, adapted from a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, is
about a mature young girl named Enid who goes through life whispering
ironically sarcastic insults at everyone and everything. The people who have
embraced conformity or the mainstream are like pointless wastes of space to
Enid. Her best friend Rebecca shares her enthusiasm for the bizarre and
distaste for the normal. They’ve just finished high school and, ready to
demonstrate to the world how awesome they are and how much cooler they can make
it, are preparing to get an apartment together. Rebecca, ever the more
realistic of the two, is ready to do what it takes to make that happen.
Unfortunately for Enid, surviving the world usually means conformity,
compromise, and adhering to the rules you think are garbage. So Rebecca is
looking for a job, shopping for kitchen cups and utensils, and starting to grow
up. Enid doesn’t have the patience to put up with lesser mortals and so she can’t
even hold down a movie theater job where she is in thrall to corporate rules of
up-selling to larger size popcorns and not dissing the films. By contrast, Rebecca
seems content at her Starbuck’s knock-off coffee shop job.
When Thora Birch appeared as Enid, her star was on the
rise. She was successfully transitioning from child actress to serious adult
roles and had received excellent praise for her work in American Beauty. Enid is almost an extension of her role in that
film, but a little darker and more sarcastic. As Rebecca, Scarlett Johansson
brings something altogether different. Her classic good looks are one reason it
seems she was cast. She gets more attention from the boys than Enid does. But
then there’s her aloof performance, which at first might seem to be a misstep.
Rebecca is along fro the ride in Enid’s world. It’s like they were childhood
friends who didn’t realize they were growing apart. I imagine Enid as the
louder and more dominant personality. We see this in early scenes as she
interrupts conversations Rebecca has with other people. Becca wants to remain
loyal to her friend, but also longs for normalcy through maturity. Enid isn’t
ready for that. It’s always Enid who points out how stupid something is with
Becca quietly and perhaps reluctantly agreeing. You see this in Johansson’s
performance. It registers in her face that she doesn’t buy into Enid’s approach
to life. Becca’s suggestion to Enid in their apartment search that they pose as
yuppies reflects a well-studied understanding of the reality that landlords are
looking for a certain type and that the only way to get Enid to go along is to
present it as an ironic game.
Enid’s true kindred spirit turns out to be Seymour, a sad
sack middle-aged loser they stumble upon. He’s a vintage 78 rpm record
collector who also dabbles in antique curiosities. You could hardly ask for a
better casting than Steve Buscemi, whose odd looks, nasally voice, and hunched
stature make it entirely believable that he would have long ago given up on
romance. Seymour is perhaps what Enid could become in twenty years if she doesn’t
change. He has zero patience for what he perceives as poor taste or stupidity
and he has so much reserved anger at the world that it burst forth sometimes in
the car. When Enid witnesses this firsthand, I had this feeling she would see
herself in him and use that as the impetus for change in her own attitudes.
Alas, Seymour discovers later that she admires his caustic behavior and then I
realized Enid is one of the saddest of all movie heroines because she’s not
destined for change.
A handful of other recognizable actors put in effective
performances in smaller roles. Bob Balaban is Enid’s sort of mumbly and
befuddled father. Teri Garr comes in as an old rekindled flame setting the
stage to swoop back into Endi’s life. Enid can’t stand her precisely because
she is just normal. And Brad Renfro looks kind of helpless as Enid’s and Becca’s
classmate Josh, whom they use to drive them around town. But none is better or
more aptly cast than Ileana Douglas as Enid’s summer school art teacher. She
plays the part to perfection, espousing somewhat meaningless declarations of
meaningful art and artists’ intentions as if that were the be all, end all of
producing a piece. Enid sees through this crap early on, but then learns to
play the game – even Enid conforms eventually – by beating the goody-two-shoes
in the class at her own game by coming into class with a piece art work
accompanied by a bogus explanation of her intentions behind it.
I think there is more than a touch of Zwigoff in Seymour,
and possibly Clowes too, who co-wrote the screenplay. I used to see this movie
as Zwigoff thumbing his nose at normalcy and conformity. It was like a treatise
on how people should behave and Enid was the model. Now I see Zwigoff views her
a little wistfully and with some disappointment. He definitely has affection
for all the characters and points of view. I think he’s a man who feels very
outside the mainstream and unable to connect with people (like Seymour), but
recognizes how much more pleasant life can be when you learn the social skills
to relate to other human beings. “I can’t relate to 99 percent of humanity,”
bemoans Seymour. I know how he feels, but sometimes you have to suck it up,
practice, and get it done. When Enid goes off at the end, riding a bus out of
town on her own, there’s probably just as much chance she never gets off that
bus as there is that she learns something and grows up. Enid’s future is an
open book and only she has the power to decide what the next pages hold for
her.
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