Ghost World

Year:  2001

Director:  Terry Zwigoff

Screenplay:  Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic Ghost World by Daniel Clowes

Starring:  Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas

Running Time:  112 minutes

Genre:  Dark comedy, drama

In the bland suburbs of an unnamed American city, cynical teenage outcasts Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson) have just left high school.  However, a summer of wandering the streets, hanging out at kitschy diners and shops and tormenting people with their sarcastic quips and pranks is threatened by the fact that Enid has to take a remedial art class in order to graduate high school.  As the two slowly drift apart, Enid strikes up a friendship with eccentric, lonely middle-aged record collector, Seymour (Buscemi).

Ghost World started out as a slice-of-life comic series in writer-artist Daniel Clowes' Eightball between 1993 and 1997, before being published as a graphic novel in 1997.  Director Terry Zwigoff had previously made his name with the documentary Crumb, about controversial underground "comix" artist Robert Crumb.  Zwigoff shot the film in a deliberately flat, bland way, with very few extras in the streets, and the characters entered in the frame, to mimic the panels of the comic.  It also shows the alienation of the characters.  The streets are eerily quiet and empty all the time, and helps give the film it's odd, slightly surreal feel.  Thora Birch, who at the time was coming off the success of American Beauty (1999), gives a great performance as Enid, a character who is at the same time sympathetic, awkward, cool, sometimes cruel, disloyal and confused, and who wrecks havoc in the lives of her friends albeit unintentionally.  Steve Buscemi gives a very strong performance as the lonely record collector Seymour, who loves old ragtime music and collects odd old artefacts, and is mostly quiet and shy but still given to occasional fits of anger, and who the girls first encounter when he falls victim to one of their cruel pranks, but who Enid ends up developing. strong connection with.  Seymour could very easily have been very creepy character, but the way that he is written and the way Buscemi plays him, with a kind of naive sweetness, makes him a surprisingly likeable and sympathetic character.  The film marks the breakthrough role for Scarlett Johansson, who had previously gained some attention for her supporting roles in The Horse Whisperer (1998) and the Coen Brothers film The Man Who Wasn't There (2001).  She gives a very good performance as Rebecca, Enid's friend, who is just as cynical and sarcastic as her friend, but is the more popular half of the duo, and unlike Enid has solid plans for the future.  The film is billed as a comedy, and some scenes are very funny, but it is a surprisingly dark film, and it all ends on a strange, ambiguous note. Although some aspects of it have dated in the past twenty years, it is still a strange and bracing look at what it means to be lonely and trapped in the bland modern world.

Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch in Ghost World