‘Ghostlight’ Review: Sorry Leo, This Is the Best Modern ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Early on in Ghostlight, the gentle yet earnest dramedy by filmmaking duo Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan, we sit with a couple of characters as they watch the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliet. The young daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer’s Daisy, humorously remarks how star Leonardo DiCaprio has changed quite significantly in the decades since the film came out. At the same time, her father, Keith Kupferer’s Dan, struggles to surreptitiously understand what this play is about at its core. The reason he is doing this is that he has become roped into a production of said play and is trying to learn the basics without his family finding out. Though it’s both a silly and sweet scene, authentically capturing a brief moment of peace in a family navigating a tumultuous time, it’s also gesturing towards the film’s prevailing thematic interests. What impact does William Shakespeare have on the modern day? Specifically, is there a timeless, even healing, value to art that we are at risk of losing in modern society? If all the world’s a stage, what part do we now play in it?

It’s these central ideas that set Ghostlight apart from the many more often hit-or-miss modern takes on Romeo and Juliet that we’ve gotten over the years. While not a literal adaptation, it’s distinctly grappling with some of the heavier ideas in the text surrounding mortality and loss. This is then filtered through the life of a lonely working-class man and his Chicago family as they try to collectively work through a recent loss that has shaken them to their core. There is nothing that can fix what has been taken, but they are all having a hard time processing the pain, let alone even speaking about it in the first place. That we begin to see how art mimics the family’s life could easily feel like a convenient contrivance in lesser hands, but Ghostlight handles its revelations with a grace that ensures it mostly all comes together. This is a film that wears its emotions on its sleeves and earns nearly every one of them, making for an often moving merging of performance and reality. For every moment where it can risk starting to feel cloying and a little clunky in parts, the care and charm of the performances make it a production worth applauding by the time it all comes together.

What Is ‘Ghostlight’ About?

This all begins with Dan going about getting up early to go work at his construction job. This won’t last long as he’ll get called in along with his wife Sharon (Tara Mallen) to Daisy’s school, where she has gotten in trouble for allegedly pushing a teacher. It’s the first of what we are told are many problems that she’s been having. Both Dan and Sharon clearly want to help her, though both feel like they’re also carrying around a weight that is making this quite difficult. There are allusions to something tragic having recently happened, and the trio are also preparing for a deposition of some kind that seems to be bringing all of this to the surface. The person who seems to be struggling with this most is Dan, even as he tries to keep it all bottled up, resulting in him grabbing a man from his car and shouting at him after he honks at him while he is working. He unexpectedly meets Rita (Dolly De Leon), who is working on a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Dan, never one for acting in stage productions even as he likes watching Daisy in them, soon begins to find connection and an outlet for all of his feelings when he gets a major part in this humble staging.

Though not quite as good as this, Ghostlight asks fundamental questions about the value of art in modern life in the same vein as the recent Perfect Days did ever so subtly. The same poetry and patience aren’t quite achieved here as the story itself often plays out more conventionally, undercutting emotional beats ever so slightly at key moments to spell out its ideas. There are also a few less effective comedic scenes, riffing on some of the similar premises about actors and their pretentiousness already done much better in the series Barry, that it then has to backpedal on to reconfigure them into more dramatic ones.

While a little clunky, once it can get past these moments, that’s where Ghostlight finds its place on stage. There are plenty of reference points beyond the Shakespeare of it all, with scenes that recall the classic Good Will Hunting in terms of its reflections on therapy, just as there is a needle drop that had my mind bouncing to the more recent Aftersun, though the most interesting bits surround the way the ideas of the play become intertwined with the life of Dan and his family. While he is seemingly aware of this, becoming drawn to the play as a way to process his feelings, he still takes a while to vocalize them. This predictably leads to a bit of a humorous misunderstanding, one of the more delightful gags in the movie, but the greatest achievements come in everything that follows when everything comes into the open.

‘Ghostlight’ Is a Truthful Look at Trauma

For all the ways many modern movies tack on ideas surrounding trauma in ways that can feel ham-handed rather than honest, Ghostlight is a much more complete portrait that stands apart. As we come to see, Dan’s desire to join in on the play had far more to do with all he couldn’t say outside of it and the way what was written for him gave him the words that he needed. Even when there were some emotional beats elsewhere that felt forced, it’s this central element where the film itself finds all the right things to say.

There is nothing easy about this journey, and we see the agony that Dan has buried deep down come bursting out at the expense of others. And yet, this is what trauma looks like. It doesn’t always come in grand proclamations or neat metaphors. Rather, it’s about trying to find meaning where there may be none and the messy process that involves. It’s like a good theatrical production. It’s often charming and more than a little chaotic. However, if done well, it represents a cathartic way to send us all back into the world to navigate our own stages before we return to the ones we’ve built to practice what it means to be alive.

Ghostlight is now playing in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes near you.

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