Movie Review: 'Ghost'

One of my favourite podcasts, The Rewatchables, recently did an episode discussing the 1990 smash-hit film Ghost, staring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.

While I am of course aware of its famous ‘pottery’ scene, I had never seen the film in full, and so I took the opportunity to watch it earlier this week.

Having been made in 1990, the film is of course somewhat limited, given its ethereal premise - by the graphic sophistication of the time. As you might have guessed, the film features many characters reincarnated as ‘ghosts’, who, in true other-wordly fashion, can only be seen by certain characters and hold somewhat random physical properties (they can walk through walls and objects, but sometimes move them, and they always exact pressure on the ground so as to remain above it? Don't think too hard about it!)

Of course, this is hardly the point. Ghost is a great watch (and re-watch I think), because it is so thoroughly human. Like other 1990s box-office behemoths (Titanic springs most readily to mind, but also Forrest Gump in its own unconventional way), Ghost expertly combines a timeless sense of tragedy and romance. This is not a new phenomenon (Romeo & Juliet springs most immediately to mind), rather, it is a proven winning formula for audiences.

Spoiler alert (not really, it’s the entire premise of the film), but Patrick Swayze’s character Sam dies near the very beginning of the film, only to appear throughout the rest of the film as a ghost who can only be seen by Whoopi Goldberg’s Oda Mae, a dodgy-seeming Lower Manhattan psychic with a history of crime and penchant for bright outfits. Whoopi went on to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role, a well-deserved step on her road to an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards) given her scene steeling performance.

The emotional resonance of the film stems from the relationship of Swayze’s Sam and Demi Moore’s Molly. Young lovers living the New York City dream, mid-way through renovating their ‘undiscovered’ SoHo loft, the couple’s future is tragically eclipsed when Sam is murdered one night as they walk home from a date. The depth of Molly’s loss, of having lost the man she expected to be spending the rest of her life with, is palpable and for anyone at a similar stage in their life, gut-wrenching.

Of course, its premise is ridiculous if taken literally. The movie doesn’t help itself on this score by quite literally sending its protagonist into the light of heaven and its antagonists into the darkness of hell as the movie concludes. But the final emotional farewell of Sam and Molly, played by two iconic movie stars of the era and facilitated (quite physically as well as emotionally) by Whoopi’s Oda Mae transcends all that. I challenge you not to well up as a classical version of ‘Unchained Melody’ swells as the lovers part for the last time.

Its over-the-top, reality suspending, heart-rendering Hollywood cheese, and for me, there’s nothing not to love about that.