Ghostlight
An employee is attracted into a construction site of “Romeo and Juliet” in the drama film named “Ghostlight,” where traumatized people recover through art. It is messy the way life is messy. It is one of those films that always feels too long and not long enough at the same time. However, there’s a purity and earnestness to this movie which now seems rare in American independent cinema.
Directed jointly by Kerry O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (script written by O’Sullivan), both based in Chicago as filmmakers; the narrative centers around a real-life family who work as actors. The father, Dan played by Keith Kupferer, works in construction while residing with his wife Sharon acted upon Tara Mallen and their teenage daughter Daisy whom Katherine Mallen Kupferer portrays. This family has issues you can tell that from before it tells all its problems so you can study them.
One thing about “Ghostlight” which I found most interesting might annoy some viewers: until well into the movie, we don’t really know what’s up with these folks (I won’t spoil anything but let us just say unimaginable loss). For much longer than necessary do we struggle to understand why everyone around here behaves as if they’ve gone mad or something worse indeed! Though quiet and out-of-it at work, Dan occasionally loses control over his temper with explosive consequences outside himself too, meanwhile misbehaving student Daisy faces disciplinary action for swearing at school where nobody ever swears least of all her! Hanging on by a thread, dutiful mother/wife Sharon finally shows signs she may not be able to hold any longer soon enough…
In “Triangle of Sadness,” which is set in an unnamed European city, Rita (played by Dolly De Leon) is a member of a small local theatre company. She meets Dan when he begins doing noisy construction work outside their building, and he eventually ends up being unwittingly cast opposite her as Romeo in a very low-budget production of “Romeo and Juliet.” It’s not that the much younger actor playing Romeo expresses discomfort with the fact that Rita is in her 50s, rather, there’s no way for him to know that she’s any older than he is, since they’re never properly introduced it’s just another gig for him. But when he complains that it feels weird, Dan who has stumbled into the group on account of having temporarily misplaced his hammer gets recruited to fill in.
These are some of the weakest moments in “Triangle,” unfortunately. A few scenes have a sitcom tendency; many of these involve Daisy (Kupferer), who’s played by Kupferer like Cusack if Cage had given birth to her i.e., with an innate bigness even when she’s small. (She arrives at the theater one day wearing what appears to be a jerkin made out of stuffed animals.) Not only is Dan embarrassed by his involvement in theater (he mostly comes off as strong silent macho), but also by the fact that it’s a romantic role involving kissing (there’s a wonderful bit where Lanora apologizes to Romeo for not being able to afford an intimacy coordinator, then guides them through some basic [intimacy exercises] herself). It’s not so much that Dan keeps this secret life secret so much as the way they expose it, it would’ve been funny if this happened on a sitcom, yes, but also none of this makes any sense based on who discovers what and what else is in the room.
But many of the film’s delights spring from this, too. Daisy is a force of nature; she barrels through everybody’s life like a petite tornado. And after a while you not only get used to her but begin to appreciate that she (and Kupferer) never come at a scene or moment in quite the way you expect or they do exactly as expected, though much sooner than it could’ve been expected. She is so intense that even when her character is just standing there waiting for her turn to speak even when she’s just part of a bigger moment and not silent-observing another character altogether your eye naturally goes to her, because you know she’s thinking five or six things at once.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree both elder Kupferer and Mallen reveal additional layers in Mom and Dad, and avoid predictable responses and readings. Near the end of the movie, Mallen has a powerful scene where Sharon takes her husband to task for playing the hero while she does all of the grunt work for their family it’s a moment that will hit home with a lot of viewers. Daddy Kupferer, meanwhile, plays sadness in a manner that is bracingly true to life. You see why no one around Dan can fathom the depths of his sorrow or recognize the signs of a man who’s always on the brink of either disintegrating or exploding.
There were quite a few English and Australian comedy-dramas made 20 to 30 years ago about how art can liberate and transform people who never thought of themselves as creative, movies like “The Full Monty” and “Brassed Off.” Patrick Wang’s recent masterpieces “A Bread Factory Part One” and “A Bread Factory Part Two” covered similar ground in more formally audacious ways. “Ghostlight” is an honorable entry in this tradition. The film has the good sense to let its actors articulate meaning by embodying characters; it shows us their feelings rather than bogging everything down with exposition or thematically reductive speeches that turn deep thoughts into bumper stickers or memes.
“Ghostlight” doesn’t maximize every rich potentiality contained within its premise, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were three or four hour cuts sitting in filmmakers’ draft folders somewhere. But I don’t think less of it because it doesn’t do everything that it potentially could have done. This seems like an intuitive movie; there’s something real about how it works through things. It tries your patience early but gathers power as it goes along, the last half hour hits you hard, partly because you can’t precisely chart all the different meanings and associations it’s summoning. You just have to let it be the thing that it’s becoming, then decide to connect with it and let its feelings become your own.
Some of the things that might seem odd at first eventually turn into sources of great strength for the film as drama, like the fact that the troupe has cast two middle aged people as Romeo and Juliet (which might get older viewers to thinking about how the mind doesn’t age in quite the same way that the body does) or even just the notion that Romeo and Juliet would be the Shakespeare play which brings this family into contact with their grief so they could work through it.
It turns out this was the right play for this family and this film. One of the many mysterious and wonderful things about art is that under certain circumstances, if you give yourself over to a piece made by people who know what they’re doing, you can watch something whose surface has no connection whatsoever with your life’s particulars, then suddenly realize Oh my God that’s me up there.
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