Ghost World

[topher]

What is the consensus here for the meaning of the ending?
Did Enid die or just move on to another part of her life?

I just can't decide if I really liked this film or just ehhh about it.

Finally, this is the first time of me actually missing FT. After watching a film like this, I would dive into the thread and read it from start to finish.

[Laira]

The bus Enid got on at the end was such an antique, I figure that it symbolized her suicide.

I just can't decide if I really liked this film or just ehhh about it.

Me neither. On one hand, Steve Buschemi is always good, and it was nice to see a movie with teen characters that isn't the usual crap with stereotypical horny guys/bitchy cheerleaders/nerds triumphing and/or the trite 'ugly duckling turns into swan' plot.

On the other hand, none of the characters were particularly likeable and the ending left me hanging.

[Deleted]

Why does everyone assume that the Thora Birch (and by the way, her name sounds like some obscure hazing ritual done in a boy's club) character dies at the end? What signals or incidents earlier in the film lead you to that conclusion? Is it the old man at the Bus Stop who finally gets on when it arrives? Old people die, so Thora's character dies, too?

I've never accepted the Death at the End argument. Thora's character wants to live and she wants more. She doesn't settle for a job at a coffee shop like Scarlett's character does. Thora's character has a sense of adventure and adventurists don't commit suicide. They may die from their adventures, but they don't give up on life voluntarily.

I thought that the Bus represented all the Possibilities in Life and that's what Thora's character wanted. I saw the Old Man as the embodiment of the Full Experience of Life, not the Advent of Death. Now I am just talking about the movie. I haven't read the Comic.

[topher]

You can get to the assumption of her death from the dark period in her life where everyone and thing goes wrong and against her. She seemed to pretty upset and just disappears for a segment.


The argument against this is that she made peace with most of the other characters at the end.

Is the comic book ending different?

[Deleted]

I always assumed she killed herself and travelled away from the world on the Bus of Death. I mean, come on, the bus didn't exist in real life. Sure, it was a tagged on surreal moment so you could take it a number of ways. But it seemed to me at the end that she didn't give a damn about anything anymore, so she "Took the Bus."

(I admit, I haven't seen the movie for quite awhile. But that was my gut feeling about the last scene.)

[keepittight]

It never even crossed my mind that the ending was anything other than literal until I read it on the Internet. It makes sense, but I loved the idea that after all her depression and dissatisfaction with, well, everything that she would up and leave and find a new life. I can really relate to the whole film's frustration with the 'ghost world' and I took it as a weirdly optimistic ending- that the 'ghost world' doesn't last forever.

So I'm sticking with my literal interpretation. I think the film is just too depressing otherwise.

It's interesting that I saw this before Scarlett was the new It Girl and I found really weird that everyone, including Enid, took it as granted that Scarlett was much prettier than Thora's character. I can see why Enid's look would be much more easy to deal with the people in such a shitty town, but I really thought Thora looked prettier and Scarlett kind of oddly lumpen and plain (and I say that as someone who thinks she is incredibly gorgeous now).

Anyway, Thora and Steve Buscemi were absolutely amazing in this film- it made me a fan of both of them. I also loved Ileania Douglas's character, and I liked it's sense of humour; the characters seemed funny in the way real people are funny, not 'movie' funny. It's kind of what a hypothetical Todd Solondz teen flick would be like.

[chiqui]

The argument against this is that she made peace with most of the other characters at the end.
Is the comic book ending different?

The comic ends the same way, but it's not a old, antique bus, just an ordinary city one. In the comic it's emphasized that the particular bus stop she gets on at has been disused for a long time and has just been re-activated. The old man pops up in the background too, not a minor character who speaks but someone who is part of the scenery and who the girls comment on now and then.

The impression I got from the comic is that Enid really didn't care whether or not she got into college; a part of her wanted to stay just where she was. And that, too, was why she got on the bus -- she wanted to remain a snarky, sarcy, slacker in the environment she was familiar with, not grow up and be an adult, at least not just then.

I'd be interested in seeing the movie and how it differs.

[Ginger]

The comic ends the same way, but it's not a old, antique bus, just an ordinary city one. In the comic it's emphasized that the particular bus stop she gets on at has been disused for a long time and has just been re-activated.

That's what I assumed from the movie...that the bus stop was now being used again, and that Enid was going to go explore the world.

[Deleted]

I thought that her getting on the bus meant that she was moving on with her life and making a leap into the unknown, not that she had killed herself. I know she goes through this period of depression but I didn't pick up on any real clues in the movie that she really wanted to die and was prepared to commit suicide. It has been a while since I have seen it, though, so I could be very wrong.

[carrier76]

I have this movie and like it; I like the beginning a lot better than the end. It's so fun when Enid and Scarlett (name?) are just going around snarking on everyone. Especially the annoying girl from H.S. Hee!