Viking Night: Ghost World
By Bruce Hall
December 7, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Before Scarlett was Scarlett...well, she was still Scarlett.
A cynical teen is about as rare as a hot day in July. Teenage bitterness is a natural outgrowth of the narcissism that afflicts us all during our developmental years. And when you combine those vestiges of self absorption with the (alleged) intellectual growth that occurs during adolescence, you build yourself a pretty stereotypical kid. You know the type - a conceited know it all who assumes that just because they can’t understand something, it shouldn’t exist. Unfortunately, cynicism is a slippery slope. Once you’ve convinced yourself the world is a rotten place, you quickly lose the ability to see things any other way and before long you can’t even remember what true happiness feels like.

When you have friends who agree with this, and are willing to enable your bleak worldview, it’s easy to insist that everyone else is the problem. But to live that way on your own is a special kind of hell. This kind of self administered torture forms the basis of the wonderfully quirky, terribly bleak film Ghost World, one of 2001’s most pleasant surprises.

Speaking of obnoxious teens, there are two of them at the center of Ghost World. Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are recently graduated high school students who are having a difficult time figuring out what to do with their lives. Enid has above average intelligence, and is a talented artist. But she has a very nasty superiority complex, and she happens to look a lot like Velma from Scooby-Doo. Needless to say, this does not endear her to her peers. Rebecca is slightly less intelligent and considerably more catty than Enid, but she also happens to look like Scarlett Johansson. Needless to say, this DOES endear her to her peers.

It’s a subtle, enduring source of friction between the two, particularly when it comes to their relationship with Josh (Brad Renfro), a classmate of theirs who works at a convenience store. The girls enjoy proving their superiority by playing petty pranks on strangers and they just love tormenting Josh like a couple of bitchy sirens until he helps them. Josh plays along because he’s attracted to Rebecca, who finds him less appealing than an ape. Enid is attracted to Josh but is disgusted by her feelings, since she considers him beneath her. This unacknowledged competition helps foster the growing disconnect between the girls as they approach adulthood and begin to grow apart. If that sounds silly to you, then old age has robbed you of your memory.

At MY high school, every day was filled with stupid crap like this.

One day, the girls are thumbing through personal ads in the newspaper (it’s like an iPad made out of paper), mocking the sad state of affairs that would lead someone to look for love this way. They drag Josh along, all seemingly oblivious to the irony of three perpetually lonely people making fun of someone who is at least trying to find a date. The girls single out one especially sad ad, and decide to make a prank call to the man who placed it. They invite him to meet his Dream Girl at a kitschy local eatery and arrive early to witness the spectacle. The disheveled looking guy shows up, enjoys a delicious milkshake and leaves, dejected. The girls follow him home in Josh’s car and proceed to go through his mail. Seymour (Steve Buscemi) is his name, and Rebecca immediately declares him a plague. Enid takes pity though, and regrets their insensitive joke. Josh is appalled, but puts up no resistance since he’s still hoping to hit it with Rebecca someday. The whole thing ends up being one of those unanticipated turning points in life, after which nothing can be the same again.

This is because Enid discovers her sympathy for their victim goes deeper than she’d anticipated. Even deeper than her relationship with Rebecca. Seymour is an awkward, rumpled man with a craggy face, bad teeth and poorly developed social skills. But he’s also fiercely intelligent, and endearingly old fashioned. He’s more attractive inside than outside, which is a difficult concept for teens to grasp but Enid finds herself enthralled by it. The two outcasts discover a shared passion for antiques and old music, and despite their great age difference spend many an evening passionately discussing all such things until the wee hours. Seymour and Enid are angst ridden elitists, convinced they’re better than everyone else yet strangely unable to connect with anyone the way you’d think such superior people could.

Enid takes it upon herself to find a companion for Seymour and unwittingly ends up being a little jealous when he finally meets someone. Meanwhile, Rebecca has also moved on. Impatient with Enid’s laziness, Rebecca has found herself a job and place to live all by herself. She’s still a vapid twit, but she’s discovering that to flourish within society, one really has no choice but to be a part of it. None of this helps Enid, whose selfish, vindictive nature proves to be her undoing - and everyone else’s. Sometimes the problem with being smart is that you end up outsmarting yourself. Enid and Seymour are just victims of their own brilliance. Rebecca’s saving grace is that she’s not all that bright to begin with, and yes, she looks like Scarlett Johansson. Dumb and pretty makes friends a lot faster than smart and bitchy.

I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, Bruce. This all sounds pretty freaking depressing.” And you’re right. It is. “Ghost World” hews quite closely to the comic on which is is based, and just like the comic it is witty, intelligent, beautiful, dreary and confusing. It is also afflicted with the same propensity to outsmart itself. The main characters are surprisingly realistic and nuanced. The questions posed by the story are accessible and curiously absorbing. But the film grapples with far too many big questions to even begin offering any solutions. At the end, it feels as though a lot has happened, but nothing and nobody has really changed. And what lessons ARE learned by each character only seem to serve to entrench them deeper into their chosen rut.

But don’t worry, there’s far more to this movie than I have described, and it’s a rich experience that is well worth your time. It’s just that the ending leaves you feeling a bit shortchanged. That’s certainly not a crime, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said that about a lot of movies that leave us hanging at the end. Life doesn’t always give us answers, or solutions, so it’s not exactly unrealistic. But effective storytelling requires a beginning, a middle and an end - and the end typically ties in with the beginning if it’s to be a rewarding experience. “Ghost World” is about cynical people who are so misanthropic that they can’t see how full of opportunity their lives really are. We’ve all known people like this; too unhappy to live, to afraid to just end it all. It’s the hamster wheel from hell and once you’re on it, there’s sometimes no getting off. So...you know...don’t get on.

Maybe that’s the point of “Ghost World”. Some lives are meant to be a warning to others. Don’t believe your own hype. It’s easy to be an expert when all you have to provide is an opinion.

Message received. Mission accomplished.