GHOST WORLD, 2001
Movie Review

Enid and Rebecca leave their high-school graduation with dreams of living out the fantasy of getting a house together. However, while Rebecca wants to move on and grow up, Enid has no such desires and the two grow apart while Enid grows closer to self confessed nerd Seymour.

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REVIEW:

Graphic novels don’t really have the best reputation. They aren’t treated with the same reverence as books and are seen by most as comic extensions or superhero stories. But there are stories out there in graphic novels that are far more interesting than a lot of adapted books, and they often work better because of the cinematic style of drawings in the first place. Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World is an adapted graphic novel, in which he placed himself into the mindset of a teenage girl. In doing so he managed to capture the angst and confusion of not knowing what to do with your life perfectly.

Enid (Birch) is a typical outsider, she doesn’t fit in at school and she seems content with the fact. Resigned to being un-cool she spends her time making sarcastic quips and snide asides with her friend Rebecca (Johansson), a girl who could be much more popular if she wanted. The two of them have harboured dreams of living together since they were little girls and now, with graduation behind them, they have the chance to make dreams into reality. Like with all fantasies thought up in our youth, the long-term ramifications aren’t considered and Enid can’t leave behind the outsider lifestyle as Rebecca quickly assimilates into the working world.

Seymour is the ideal man for Enid in her masochistic search for belonging. He is a loner like her, obsessed with pop culture and repelled by everything considered ‘fun’- this includes hanging around with other people and generally going outside. They meet because of a prank that Enid and Rebecca pull, replying to a personal ad and dragging Seymour to a diner to embarrass him. When they find out more about him and his loathing for the populous at large Enid finds herself drawn to him and they spend more and more time together.

A lot of the humour in this film comes from Enid paradoxically forcing Seymour to do the things she herself hates. They go to a bar together to see Seymour’s favourite thing live, traditional blues, only to be bombarded with the bombastic guitar of Blueshammer, the brash personification of everything they both hate. Steve Buscemi does a great job of capturing the character of Seymour, it isn’t that he wants to not be involved with others, he just feels like he can relate to them.

Seymour is world-weary and unlike Enid’s the reasons for his pessimism stem from the fact he has had the fight ground out of him by years of office work and unsuccessful dates. The relationship between the two is more a co-dependency as they try to cope with the fact that neither of them can relate to the world outside. When Enid tries to get a date for Seymour it is because as she says ‘I can’t stand to think of a world where a guy like you can’t get a date,’ because if he can’t there’s the danger she can’t.

Norman is single minded of purpose and knows exactly what he wants, confident that his bus will eventually come and he can escape. Once all her relationships have been destroyed and she has nothing left Enid, left disheartened by everything around her, follows the same route to Norman.

The great thing about Ghost World is it manages to capture the existential angst that people try to leave behind as they grow up, and exposes the fact that this fear never leaves and we are always looking for that elusive belonging which can bring us happiness. It also helps that this film is deliciously barbed and the sarcastic shots, which occur repeatedly throughout the film, are brilliant, quick and acutely observed. Enid might never actually find what she needs but that’s because there is no such perfection, something the graphic novel observes brilliantly and what has transferred to the film is a great representation of the book.

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GHOST WORLD