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copyright ©1999-2003 |
Plot synopsis
Sullen
Enid has just graduated from high school. Well, sort of anyway: on
graduation day, she finds a note attached to her diploma that informs
her she has to go to summer school to re-take an art class she
previously failed. (The
irony of it is that art is maybe the one thing that apathetic Enid has
an obvious talent for, and actually gives a damn about, not that she’d
ever admit the latter; she’s constantly toting around her battered
sketch diary, documenting the little things she sees each day in clever
cartoons.) It’s a drag, but then again, so is everything in Enid’s
life: she wears cold, smart sarcasm like her favorite pair of beat-up
black combat boots, a sort of long-held, defiant screw-you to the rest
of the world, 99.99% of which she can’t and won’t identify with at
all. Enid doesn’t have a clue about what she wants to do with her
going-nowhere life, but she does know she doesn’t want to turn into
any of the pathetic, phony losers she sees around her wherever she goes.
Her best friend Rebecca’s one of the few people she can actually
stand, her partner in mocking the many idiots with whom they’re
unlucky enough to have to share the world. But when Rebecca begins to
show signs of wanting to succumb to all the “normal” things people
are supposed to do when they grow up – get a soul-sucking job, meet a
cute hipster boy, find and decorate an apartment – Enid finds herself
more alone than even she can really stand. Which is how she comes to
find herself hanging out with Seymour – timid, middle-aged chicken
chain assistant manager by day, obsessive collector of old 78s and other
outdated paraphernalia by night – who starts out as the unknowing
victim of one of Enid and Rebecca’s jokes, and turns into the unlikely
object of Enid’s respect and affection. Review
Watching
Terry Zwigoff’s darkly funny, quirky, lovely Ghost World, I
know I should sympathize with Enid.
She’s a weird, smart teen who doesn’t fit in with the rest of
her peers. She’s bright, funny, creative; she has a fabulous knack for
carelessly tossed-off witticisms. It’s hard not to kind of admire a
girl who decides one afternoon that she’s going to dress authentic
1977 punk, not to embody the punk mindset, but to poke fun at it. But
for the most part, Enid just strikes me as pathetic, constantly hiding
behind that cool armor of disdain and utter boredom, refusing to run the
risk that she’ll look like a dork if she shows she actually cares
about anything or anyone. She’s the sort of girl I probably would have
thought was really cool when I was seventeen, the kind of girl I
occasionally fancied myself to be, which, I guess, may be why she’s
kind of painful for me to watch. The problem with Enid is that she’s
so consumed with the idea that “not normal” defines her that she
can’t let herself grow into anything more interesting than that. Thora
Birch makes a wonderful Enid, but Enid, for the most part, doesn’t
strike me as all that wonderful. It’s Steve Buscemi’s Seymour that I
end up adoring: here’s a guy who looks funny, dresses funny, talks
funny, feels funny – and not cool funny the way Enid styles herself
either; he’s just plain odd. Seymour knows himself well enough to know
that this is just who he is at heart, and doggedly pursues his weird
passions despite the fact that he knows they’re totally lame. That
Enid comes to admire Seymour is the thing that redeems her character in
my eyes. Enid may be holier-than-thou pretentious right now, but by the
end, I’m left feeling like there’s hope she’ll grow out of it,
become comfortable enough with her own weirdness to quit dwelling on how
different she is from everyone else, and get on with her life: to figure
out that knowing who she doesn’t want to be isn’t nearly as
satisfying as exploring who she really is. The funny thing is, I could
easily imagine someone else watching Ghost World and thinking
Enid’s the hero, and Seymour just a sad-sack loser (and given the
conclusion, it’s even possible that that’s what the filmmakers
felt). But in the end, the ambiguity is what I like so much about Ghost
World. It lets the characters be who they are, rather than forcing
them into who viewers might expect them to be.
---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home . |
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