...a small but truthful attempt to put into words and pictures the frustrations of being different, of growing up amidst confused relationships, of facing an impassive society, and of attempting to find oneself.
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Imagine, if you will, a world filled with multitudes of empty, vacuous people; shallow, dull, insufferable boors; insensitive conformists consumed with trivialities; indifferent clones with herd mentalities; and, of course, the sights of rampant commercialism everywhere you turn. What, you say it isn´t so hard to imagine at all? OK, now imagine you´ve just graduated from high school, you´re bright and perceptive, and you´re ready to go out and face this uncaring world. Do you do so with an open heart and a ready smile, or do you attempt to rebel, build up a wall of resistance, adopt a superior attitude, and become an outsider? That´s just the situation Enid, the young heroine of "Ghost World," finds herself in, and she has chosen the latter course. She and her best friend, Rebecca, are going to buck society in this darkly serious comedy that comes up one of the best movies of 2001.
Remarkably, however, the film is not just a social satire, although its first half is aimed largely in that direction. It is more properly a coming-of-age tale, a probing of the personal attitudes, dispositions, and angst of its protagonist and at least a partial glimpse at her emerging self-realization. The movie suggests with uncanny accuracy the difficulties people create for themselves when they consciously choose to exclude themselves from their surroundings, no matter how difficult those surroundings may appear. "Ghost World" is haunting, humorous, biting, insightful, touching, and immensely rewarding.
Based on the successful comic-book characters created by Daniel Clowes, with a screenplay cowritten by Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff ("Crumb"), the movie follows the topsy-turvy course of Enid and Rebecca, two best friends attempting to find their place in a world after high school. Played by Thora Birch ("American Beauty," "Hocus Pocus") and Scarlett Johansson ("The Horse Whisperer," "Just Cause"), the girls are just a step away from appearing to others as the rejects they like to ridicule. Finding themselves self-proclaimed pariahs, they have few or no friends outside their own close association. They snub their former classmates, look down upon practically everyone around them, and attempt to embarrass even lunch-counter waiters: "Hi, Al. Can we call you weirdo?" The targets of the film´s early jabs are the usual easy types--rah-rahs, airheads, dorks. The girls enjoy following around people they think are geeks, like an ordinary couple they figure are Satanists. Bob Balaban plays Enid´s father, also a target for mild criticism as he seems so completely a wimpish liberal with his daughter, offering little or no strong advice for her to follow. In an uncredited cameo appearance, Teri Garr plays the father´s girlfriend, Maxine, less a target of lampooning than a source of irritation for Enid.
The story is peopled with all sorts of eccentric oddballs for Enid and Rebecca to fault, like a grumpy Greek convenience store owner; a bizarre, shirtless, martial- arts admiring customer; a well-intended, touchy-feely art instructor without a clue; and an old fellow, Norman, who patiently sits on a street bench throughout the movie waiting for a bus that is out of service and that Enid assures him will never come.
Most important to the story, though, is Steve Buscemi as Seymour, a single, nerdy, fortyish man stuck in a no-end corporate job, on whom the girls decide to play a practical joke. They read a personals ad he´s placed in the newspaper asking to find a woman he once met briefly. The girls call him up pretending to be the woman and asking him to meet her at a restaurant. When Seymour arrives, they watch him from a distance and laugh to themselves at what they consider so pathetic a creature. With the reluctant help of their friend, Josh (Brad Renfro), they secretly follow Seymour home. But shortly thereafter something very odd and very magical happens. Seymour is an obsessive collector of old records, and at a garage sale he´s conducting, Enid buys one of his vinyl discs. She loves the old tune so much she goes back the next week and strikes up a conversation, finding more in common with him than she might have thought, first in old music and then in their general attitudes toward life. Both are social outsiders; both are sad, nervous, and insecure. Finding little to relate to in people her own age, Enid is drawn increasingly toward the much older Seymour, and as she does so, her friendship with Rebecca grows more distant. Seymour says "he can´t relate to 99% of humanity," an observation that seems to delight Enid no end, as she has finally found a kindred spirit. But beneath Enid and Seymour´s hard outer shells of cynicism lie warm, gentle, caring people longing to be recognized by, and find a part in, the world around them. Their brief, poignant relationship forms the emotional core of the movie.
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