Saturday, April 23, 2005

Ghost World

Hey, wow - Ghost World is pretty near perfect. Funny and bittersweet and wistful and barbed, the film made me smile nearly the whole way through, but it also touched me, and I sighed at its ending. It's carried off with the lightest of touches, all vibrant colours and well-lit spaces, off-the-wall music and too-cool decor, caustic one-liners and sudden whimsy, but it's unsparingly clear-sighted and absolutely note-perfect in its evocation of that something which may as well be everything - the experience of subtle loneliness and quiet sadness which comes with being fundamentally at odds with the world, and more than that, the way we attempt to get by regardless. Tis a bit of a fantasy, and an open-ended, impossible-to-pin-down one at that, but it rings true, and somehow, at least tonight, this film really spoke to me. Wrestle though I may with these words, I can't express how wonderful Ghost World is - I simply adore it.