So I watched Ghostworld last night.......(no real spoilers)

[Pert_UK]

Beautifully made and well acted, and I couldn't help thinking that it really captured the flavour of the late-teenage years - indecision, frustration, and the difficulties of being expected to behave like both a child and an adult. It also observed how one's own difficulties are often down to the stupid and sometimes petulant decisions one makes, and that an opportunity may not stick around if you reject it at first.

However, I can't really enthuse about the film.......I don't need a lot of action to keep me engaged, but Ghostworld didn't really keep me enthralled from start to finish. The characters and situation were interesting, but I didn't really feel any suspense or ongoing fascination with what was occurring, and thought that it was a fairly predictable (sometimes cliched) rite-of-passage / teenage frustration movie. Although I didn't really want to switch it off, equally I wasn't enthralled and would have been happy if my girlfriend had decided she'd had enough of the film and wanted to watch something else.

It's a pedestrian movie that takes effort to watch, and although it's not at all bad, neither is it one that particularly rewards the viewer for his/her perseverance. It's quirky and awkward - just like the main characters - and is also stylish (unlike them), but it doesn't drag you into the plot nor leave you enriched.

What does anybody else think? Am I missing something deep here?

[regnaD kciN]

1. Does anyone know what the ending was supposed to be about?

(SPOILER ALERT)
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When she sees the old guy get on the bus that wasn't supposed to be running anymore, and then gets on the bus herself and rides away at the very end.

Now, I got way too much training at figuring out "symbolism" back in my days watching 50s- and 60s-era foreign films, but the only thing I could think of was that the ending meant that she had taken her own life, and that the bus she was getting on represented death, riding off to a place the audience could no longer see.


(ALL CLEAR ON SPOILERS)

[Pert_UK]

5. Not sure....(response to spoiler)

I doubt that it was a metaphor implying she'd literally died.....That seems a bit extreme and out of keeping with the rest of the film. Perhaps it was implying a symbolic death of her old self and a move onto new and better things, escaping her past life, its cynicism and the mistakes she'd made, or her transition from rather petulant child to adulthood.......

Having said that, how does it relate to the old guy who'd been waiting for the bus for years? Well, it could be a bit of lazy film making where a character was needed to explain that the bus didn't run that route any more. Alternatively it was the old man escaping in a different way - he'd been waiting years for his opportunity to come to escape (from what we don't know) and showed her that it was possible, no matter how unlikely it seems...

Who knows? Maybe I'll have a think about it....

[Kire]

10. I know (response to spoiler)

well, it's all about alienation and getting squeezed out of the world by how fake and bullshitty everything is, so, by the end of the film, when all of her friends have left her, where else is she to go? the bus to, um, uhhh, Ghostworld?

how's that?

I actually thought the ending was the best part of the movie. I love tragic endings.

[Miami Liberal]

13. I view the ending more like you do (response to spoiler)

It seemed to me that she was leaving her old life behind her and going somewhere that had other people just like her, maybe to a big city.

[Kire]

14. why didn't she pack a bag?

just defending my view

[Miami Liberal]

16. Maybe it was a symbolism

about starting anew. Leaving the old baggage behind as she enters the next phase of her life. Or it could be, she had no idea where she was going so she didn't know what to pack. :shrug:

[RandomKoolzip]

2. It's an odd film.....

Terry Zwigoff has done better, though. "Crumb" is a masterwork.

As a record collector myself, I can really relate to Steve Buscemi's character in the film.

Apart from that, "Ghost World" is intersting for a few reasons: it's about trying to find some meaning in life after you've exhausted your reserve of cynicism, and wondering whether that small piece of ground you can then affirm is worth it. It's about how we, as a (youth) culture, have hipped ourselves into a corner, into a place where to affirm anything positively is to risk unhipness; where to FEEL anything besides bemused contempt brings pain. I find grappling with these issues fascinating.

The part that brought me to tears in the theatre was when Thora Birch ironically buys the blues album from Steve Buscemi's supposedly "loser" record collector, listens to it and is moved, unironically, possibly for the first time in her whole life. Zwigoff's montage sequence here is masterful.

That's another lesson of "Ghost World:" finding meaning in places which you once held contempt. You really do get the feeling that Birch's character is undergoing the first step in a long process of growth. For me, that scene alone is worth the price of the movie.

Anyhow, it's late and that probably made no sense. G'night.

[Pert_UK]

6. Very, very incisive comments.....

It made me think about the film in a lot more depth - thank you!

I totally see your points but I'm afraid that this film didn't "speak to me" very much at all. I think I'll just have to accept that it's a great film that I don't particularly enjoy or relate to, whereas it might strike a chord with others.

[mitchum]

11. Hey, that is a really good analysis of the film...

well done

I was talking to a friend (who is a record collector) about "Ghost World" last week, and while he also loves the movie, he finds the record collector party scene to be cringe-inducing (because he found it to be painfully accurate) :)

I thoroughly enjoy "Ghost World" and I agree with you that "Crumb" is a masterwork

[Kire]

15. How is "Ghost World" not a masterwork?

well, you have to have some kind of criticism

[American Renaissance]

3. a bit of a let down... SPOILER

I think the movie would have been better if it was just her terrorizing Steve Buscemi and that kid at the 7-11.

When she slept with him, that just grossed us all out.

[Pert_UK]

7. Well it would have been funnier and more exciting....

but a totally different film.

I think you're suggesting it should become a slapstick, teen comedy when it clearly wanted to be a bit more than that.

Them sleeping together didn't gross me out - it was sensitively done and quite necessary for the plot.....Just one more thing that she does because she thinks she want to, then realises she's been stupid and can't handle the consequences....

Essentially, having drag Buscemi's character out of the gutter and built him up, she sends him back again and ruins his life - not out of malice, but purely because she doesn't know what she wants and isn't thinking clearly enough to see the knock-on consequences of her actions.

[lazarus]

4. I liked it

It's my daughter's favourite film (teenager).

[ET Awful]

8. I loved the film personally.

In fact, I liked it so much I bought it on DVD :)

[blueblitzkrieg]

12. Me too.

I love me some Thora Birch. :loveya:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Although I wasn't like the main character as a teenager, I could

relate to certain aspects of her situation: being a quirky thinker in an utterly conformist school, feeling that I didn't belong in my own family or anywhere else, and yet not being too sensitive to other people's feelings.