When I was in University, the buzzword we were told audiences would flock to was “authenticity,” but today, if you listen to industry talk, the word of the moment is “spectacle,” which the prevailing wisdom defines as “big and flashy action.” But considering the stellar box offices and streaming performances of 2024 post-Dune 2 films like Hit Man, Inside Out 2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Challengers, maybe authenticity is spectacle, and there are few films in theaters this year as authentic as Ghostlight.
Keith Kupferer as Dan Mueller in Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s 2024 drama GHOSTLIGHT. Image courtesy of IFC Films.
The film stars Keith Kupferer (Widows), who’s never led a film before, but whose stony visage will tickle the majority of minds. He’s the press conference heckler in The Dark Knight (2008) who tells Aaron Eckhart’s (Sully) Harvey Dent that Batman “…should turn himself in.” With his heavy-set jaw, broad shoulders, and blunt nose, this theatre vet and character actor made a great Gothamite. But in Ghostlight, he makes an even better blue-collar, no-nonsense father doing his best to raise his troubled daughter, played by the insanely talented Katherine Mallen Kupferer (Widows; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret). And yes, she’s his real-life daughter. The family is completed by Tara Mallen (Contagion; The Last Shift), who also hasn’t acted in many films, but you wouldn’t know it watching them interact, because the three actors make the most believable on-screen family in years, topping the likes of Coda (2021) and A Thousand and One (2023). All the more impressive when you see the outrageous performance from Katherine Mallen Kupferer.
“It seemed like you might like the change of being someone else for a while.”
Katherine’s Daisy is such a little shit — a ridiculously angry teen of a kind familiar to any summer camp counselor. Yet, her elevated performance is grounded by the gravity of her father’s. The way his eyes take in his on-screen wife, the way they study the film’s only (and under-used) actor of renown, Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness; A Very Good Girl), and the way they disappear into shadow watching the finale of Romeo and Juliet. “How does it end,” he asks his daughter. “It’s a tragedy,” he’s told, the kind of thing he and his family are already grieving.
Katherine Mallen Kupferer as Daisy in Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s 2024 drama GHOSTLIGHT. Image courtesy of IFC Films.
Ghostlight is a film about what comes after tragedies, so much so that one could even call it an open-secret sequel to one of the greatest literary works of all time, and a damn good one at that. When his daughter pushes her school teacher, Kupferer’s Dan is forced to place her in therapy to avoid expulsion. The therapist wants him to participate, but he’s “too old school.” This is just the first domino that leads him to joining Dolly de Leon’s community theater troupe, who are hilariously struggling to stage a performance of Romeo and Juliet.
For folks who don’t know what a “ghost light” is, it’s a theater term for one light bulb that is left on to keep the theater from being completely dark while empty, serving the tradition of pacifying the ghosts that haunt old theatres. Ghostlight is a film about coming to terms with the ghosts that haunt you, in an old theater. This means it’s also about working through very serious emotions with frankly, very unserious people: grown-up theater kids. It’s funny, but not a comedy; inspiring, but not pretentiously so; it’s a drama, but it’s not melodramatic. The catharsis it aims for is a realistic expectation of what it’s like to work through something, and it’s beautiful and fun to watch.
L-R: Dolly de Leon as Rita and Keith Kupferer as Dan Mueller in Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s 2024 drama GHOSTLIGHT. Image courtesy of IFC Films.
The film is nice to look at, but even more so to listen to. Music is employed through a mix of score, needle drop, and sung song, which is so deftly handled that it even makes good use of Queen’s Under Pressure in a post-Aftersun (2022) world. This intermingling of technique is almost as complex as the emotions that weave through Ghostlight. I watch a lot of movies for this gig, and a question I’m asked often when describing a drama’s plot or theme is “Why would I watch that? It seems sad.” I’ve written in response to this before about the personal catharsis experiencing art can bring, but another way of answering that question, is “Well, why would someone make that?”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.
This is the first of two critically acclaimed films about the renewing power of communal theater to release this year, with A24’s Sing Sing coming to theaters in just under 30 days. This confluence is significant, because these in-person performances are what we lost more than films during the earliest days of the ongoing COVID crisis, and now artists are revisiting why we missed them so. Making art means something to the people who do it, and it means even more when we do it together. I have seen thousands of AI-generated videos and images this year, without seeking a single one out. I have watched brilliant people come face-to-face with a future of poverty as CEOs promise to free us of the “chores” of writing, drawing, painting, photographing, acting, and programming. People tell “sad” stories about overcoming tragedy because they enjoy entertaining each other with sad stories about overcoming tragedy. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, and it’s good work if you can get it. Ghostlight lets you join in the act for 115 minutes. I can’t help but wonder, what’s more “spectacle” than that? Catch it in a theater while you can, it literally takes place in one.
In select theaters June 14th, 2024.
Expanding into North Carolina theaters June 28th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official IFC Films Ghostlight webpage.
Final Score: 5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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