GHOSTLIGHT dir. Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson
by Morgan Stone and Sienna Axe
1/22/24 @ 8:30 pm, Redstone Cinema - 1
When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life. (via Sundance)
Morgan: Throughout the film, you begin to understand the characters: Dan Mueller, who struggles to make sense of tragedy in his life, Daisy Mueller, his outspoken and often impulsive daughter, and Sharon Mueller, his wife who does her best to keep the family together. When Dan meets Rita, she pulls him into a world of community theater to perform a rendition of Romeo and Juliet. Through this supportive environment, Dan begins to deal with his closely guarded emotions.
The family in this film feels like it extends beyond the screen, and the movie only serves as a function to understand them. As an audience, you aren’t fully clued into the tragedy that this family has undergone until near the climax, which allows you to grow attachments to the characters and understand their motivations. They have incredibly natural chemistry, and it is no wonder that the three main actors (Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen, & Katherine Mallen Kupferer) are a family unit in real life. While having this sort of connection off-screen can sometimes become a barrier for actors on screen, they use it to make the film feel fully realized and the characters seem genuine.
It did border on being a bit too on the nose with the parallels it drew, and at times it felt that it fit together too well, but overall it still told a moving story with fully-realized characters.
All of the actors in Ghostlight make the film special. They gave performances that were nuanced and brought perspectives that shifted the characters into real people. During the Q&A, the directors shared that it was a very collaborative process, where particularly the actors portraying the community theater troupe developed the characters that were written on the page into their own ideas, adding dynamics between themselves and other actors, and motivations that extended beyond what was initially intended.
For a film about the power of theater, it truly embraced the collaboration and interaction that makes it so special. I don’t have a ton of experience with participating in theater, but I have always been adjacent to it, and know that it can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling experience. While I cannot attest to the accuracy of its portrayal of community theater, I would wager it is quite accurate.
The technical filmmaking leaves me without too much to say. I wasn’t a fan of the shaky-cam style that is often used to make the production seem natural, but that is more of a stylistic preference than a critique of the execution. I don’t feel that much stood out in how it was shot or edited, which on the one hand means that the writing and actors did a wonderful job of engrossing me in the story, but on the other hand, means that there isn’t much for me to comment on.
Overall, Ghostlight was incredibly touching, and also had an endearing comedic side that felt like a great balance to the serious subject matter.
Sienna: I always have a hard time wrapping my head around Theater Films - the amount of theater I’ve done in my life tends to either make me too forgiving or too critical. To try to combat this, I’m trying to approach Ghostlight with a question: what function does the theater serve? Is it a character in itself? A supernatural entity? Or is it just a vehicle for character study - the sum of everyone in the room? The answer, in this case, is a little bit of everything. In the film’s less subtle moments, the members of the theater company become a many-headed god; an altar at which to pray for catharsis. At its best, it’s a vessel for family therapy: not an autonomous force, but a venue in which the characters can drive the repair of their own relationships. It makes sense that Kelly O’Sullivan (the writer and one of two directors, along with husband Alex Thompson) comes from theater; the film dips in and out of indulgent theater-kid references throughout. While I was able to appreciate these references, they did make me worry early on that this would be a film About Theater more than a film About People.
All of this to say that when it comes to cinema, I can be a deeply cynical person. And that I was very hesitant to like this film—but in the end I really, really did.
The real highlights here are the performances: you probably could’ve guessed that Dolly De Leon (Rita) kills, but the true standouts are real-life family Keith Kupferer (Dan Mueller), Tara Mallen (Sharon Mueller), and Katherine Mallen Kupferer (Daisy Mueller). I spent the whole film wondering at how natural their relationships felt; after, when I found out who they were, I wondered at how much talent there could be in one household. All three achieve that rare (and oft-taken-for-granted) status of Real Personhood for their characters with seemingly impossible ease. The screenplay works both for and against this. Sometimes, it dallies too long in the land of say-what-you-think, no-more, no-less. Other times, its small details—like how Dan, so insistent on his not relating to Romeo, admits he proposed to his wife on their first date—take your breath away.
There’s a scene toward the end of the film with just the suggestion of a silhouette. It’s the kind of thing that could have been too on-the-nose in another movie, but the exact way that it’s shot—where you can’t tell exactly what it is, but you can tell what Dan is thinking—keeps it well within the realm of subtlety. To me, the way that shot walks the line between grounded and cinematic embodies what makes Ghostlight so good. Balancing out the film’s more heightened aspects—the scorned diva, the improbable coincidences—is a very real, very heartbreaking family dynamic. All three are spectacular; Mallen Kupferer in particular is a marvel, and we should all be eagerly anticipating the rest of her (I’m sure) historic career. O’Sullivan and Thompson captured something truly special in their performances—and you can feel in their direction that they know it. In the post-screening Q+A, they noted that they spent a lot of time feeling out the many handheld shots, letting the actors guide the scene. As a big Cassavetes believer, I both greatly admire that choice and think it was very well-executed. I look forward to seeing what O’Sullivan and Thompson do in the future—both together and apart.
