Koko: I let you get away with some crude shit, Slothrop, but if you're going to give this movie anything higher than a C, you need to justify your grade.
Slothrop: Because it takes more than the average movie to focus on characters who are all mostly sour-pusses without dipping them in a vat of caramel; because that gumption factor gets multiplied when the characters are mostly whiny adolescents; the camera never looks away but adds a touch of softness regardless of what's in view; because it's very much about the break-up of a friendship, a hard topic to watch but a brave one to film; because, despite being surrounded by mediocrity and cliché, one of the characters deepens her understanding of her own false impulses; because it's serious but doesn't take itself too seriously (Squid and Whale, as great as it is, is a bit stiff-lipped at times); because Scarlet Johannson looks plain and uninspiring, which is nice for a change; because it takes some risks, the kind a C movie simply wouldn't––here I'm talking about the Coon/Art question. It's a good movie, gorilla, not a great one. Eat a banana and maybe you'll be less grumpy.
Koko: So I guess I'll watch it again? But before I do, here's this:
1. A perfectly awful movie can scrape some human moss from the nearest tree and let it sprout its poison just as a good one can. The question isn't whether these specimens have been caramelized; no one wants to eat them anyway. The real question is what, if anything, we, and not they, learn from their posturing cant. As I said, I'll watch it again, but off the top of my mind, I can't think of a thing I learned except fuck these girls, they make my head empty.
2. How is it harder not to sweeten an adolescent's bullshit than that of a fully grown idiot? If anything it's easier: kids are more aggressively assholes, and we like to see them spin their wheels, you know, putting on hats, not loving Steve Buscemi, and generally wasting oxygen.
3. Adding "a touch of softness" seems to conflict with your first premise re: these maudlin twats. Or do you mean a more existential softness, as in, aw, we're all hurting and ain't that just like people? Or a touch of lightness? Again, I'll check, but I remember a lot more camp than softness. As a thought experiment, consider this movie as directed by Ingmar Bergman. Two self-deluded losers meet a third. End. Assuredly not: two self-deluded losers meet a third, followed by ambiguous feelings and quiet insights. End.
4. This movie needs to be more about the break-up of a friendship and less about what two, and sometimes three, uninteresting middle-class casualties say to each other. I disagree: however much Zwigoff may have intended this thing to be about sour friendship, his product is too distracted really to be about anything other than, scene by scene, what it shows us: Everyman cultural detritus. Face it, Slothrop, this is the twenty-first century's version of a Morality Play.
5. See rebuttal (1): for the quality of the film, what we learn from Ghostiana's small epiphany matters more than what she learns from it. I can honestly say I didn't learn anything I didn't already know in the first ten or fifteen minutes. Which means either I wasn't watching carefully (this is likely) or that the movie places too much importance on Ghostiana's dismal breakthrough to the other side of obvious (this too is likely).
6. The Squid and the Whale is mostly stiff-lipped because it doesn't find life very funny. But neither does it reject any of life's discordant absurdities that do, ultimately, turn tragedy into comedy into tragedy. A wiser man would appreciate the subtle humor in an Ilie Nastase poster. Now, as for the World, no, it doesn't take itself too seriously; it knows exactly how unmemorable it is and runs accordingly.
7. Making an attractive woman look average so that she blends more effectively into the little manufactured world of semi-urban apocalypse, this is no bold stroke. It's less doing something right than it is not doing something wrong, and we shouldn't praise people, be they artists or no, for doing their jobs competently. That's all it is: competence. And also, if you're mining this middling stream for minerals, friend, you best sell your claim and prospect elsewhere.
8. Risk in and of itself means nothing and it doesn't make a movie better or worse than it is. It all depends on what kind of risk, and why, and whether it's necessary. Maybe the risk in Ghost World is necessary. I don't remember. But there are all kinds of average, Slothrop. Some films are average because they embrace ambition and it smothers them; these intend more than they execute, and their failure, I believe, usually makes them noteworthy but common. Other films are average because they strive for nothing more than to entertain their audience or to turn a profit. It seems to me you're making a serious mistake when you assume that ambition and vision and Lofty Goals ipso facto transform the work into something better than average. Just because something is not conventionally commercial does not mean it is good. I will just as happily give Haneke or Lars von Smear an F as I will Rob Zombie. House of 1000 Corpses took a lot of fuckin' risks too, but they didn't stop it from becoming uncompromising shit.
Here's yer banana.
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