Ghost (1990)
Despite having seen Ghost several times growing up and, with vaguely good memories of it, I only bought the film for one of my “not the usual” reviews. I was a lot easier to please back then, and yet somehow more adventurous with my film choices. I often chastise myself for being quite narrow minded these days. I beat myself up for not having seen all the wonderful cinema others gush over, but then I was raised Catholic; guilt is their schtick.
Surely everybody over the age of about thirty knows the famous sexy clay pottery scene from Ghost, when Patrick Swayze’s Sam erotically interrupts his artist partner Molly’s (Demi Moore) sloppy brown manipulation. Set to Roy Orbison’s warbly love classic, Unchained Melody, the scene is now iconic but the film perhaps a little forgotten. I certainly couldn’t remember much past that scene and that after being murdered Sam tries to warn Molly of danger.
Turns out that’s a pretty succinct, but sparse, recollection of Ghost’s plot. I knew Whoopi Goldberg played a medium (called Oda Mae Brown, which I had to check the name) in it but what I had lost in the fog of time, was that she, and the film, are fucking hilarious. Sam, badgering an increasingly pissed off Oda Mae, fights to defend Molly from the after life. Goldberg steals the show.
Ghost is one of those films which sits in a happy valley of genres where comedy, romance and drama converge with a trickle of thriller running through them. I say happy, because I was happy it wasn’t the soppy sludge fest I thought it would be, recalling only the clay sex. Have I mentioned my memory isn’t great?
Incredibly funny, funnier than a lot of out and out comedies, I found Ghost to be really moving towards the end, even if it does perpetuates life after death, and heaven and hell, ideas I am not on board with. Despite expecting to give you a fairy lacklustre score and sardonic review, actually Ghost bought me a lot of joy.
Whoopi Goldberg is incredible in Ghost and also has a very strange name when you think about it. Goldberg sounds Jewish and Whoopi, if she was named that at birth, is borderline child abuse. Sometimes forgetting is a good thing, I do that a lot, forgetting, and the benefits are that you can experience something experienced before as new- like brushing your teeth. A very pleasing 8/10
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