Review of Ghost World (2001) by Jean-Francois V — 12 Apr 2009

It seems strange to me that it should have taken Jewish moviemaker Terry Zwigoff seven years to direct this movie after he produced and directed "Crumb", because the film looks like a fictionalized retelling of this very interesting documentary.

In effect, what Zwigoff (or more probably the author of the original comic book, Daniel Clowes) has done is split Crumb's personality into two distinct characters: his graphic subpersonality becomes the female protagonist of the film, Jewish punk teenager Enid, who sketches people in diners on a notebook just as Crumb is shown doing in the documentary; while his musical subpersonality, with its fondness for ragtime and blues, and hatred of anything more modern, becomes Enid's unsuspected love interest Seymour (interpreted by Steve Buscemi.) For the viewer of "Crumb", it therefore becomes a kind of psychological jigsaw puzzle to see how these two people meet and more or less fail to connect.

Of course this is my reconstruction of the film, based on what little I know of Zwigoff. Clowes himself says Enid and her friend Rebecca are actually embodiments of his mixed Jewish and WASP origins - the WASP character, Rebecca, once dubbed Enid's "Aryan friend", curiously being interpreted by Jewish actress Scarlett Johansson (Birch herself, the daughter of "actors" in the pornographic industry, is also Jewish, as is Bob Balaban, who plays her father.).

I found the film quite a success, even though I don't think it adds much to "Crumb", and found it inferior to "Napoleon Dynamite" as a depiction of the lives of nerdy teenagers. I rather enjoyed the depiction of the remedial "art" class Enid goes to, I loved the nunchuk-wielding customer of the Greek store and I was surprised to find Rebecca's slow drift into suburban normality (the "Ghost World" of the title?) the most pathetic aspect of the film.