At the time that the movie Ghost (1990) was released in theaters, it was very well received. Since then, it's garnered quite a few nominations and awards including the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Top Box Office Films and two Academy Awards (Whoopi Goldberg, Best Supporting Actress and Bruce Joel Rubin, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen). Years later, it’s still gathering nominations for awards from sources like Satellite Awards (2007, Best Classic DVD) and TV Land (2008, Favorite Character from the “Other Side”).
It’s also considered to be a classic romantic movie, a chick flick before the term was born. The storyline of an investment banker (Patrick Swayze) dying in the arms of the woman (Demi Moore) he loves and then using a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg) to contact her when he fears for her life is certainly not the standard fare of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they live happily ever after” that makes up most romance films. Add in the notion that the medium is a fake until said banker breaks in on a seance she’s conducting at the time and is freaked out because she can actually hear him and you can see why this movie did as well as it did back then and has achieved classic status.
Since I hadn’t seen the movie since its original release so many years ago and it’s now available on Blu-ray Disc (BD), I thought the time had come for me to revisit Ghost and see if, to me, it’s stood up to the test of time and distance. It may seem odd that I haven’t seen in it almost eighteen years. It’s not like I’d forgotten all about it. Even if I had, the scene between Sam (Swayze) and Molly (Moore) working a pottery wheel together has been lampooned enough times over the years that just to see two people and a lump of clay would remind me of the movie. Which it has. Re-watching that scene now, I’m surprised at the staying power of its eroticism. It didn't seem to be terribly racy at the time and certainly there have been many more movies since then that have had much more nudity and plain old in-your-face sex. I suppose that’s why it’s considered a classic as this part of the film does retain its impact.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments