It was new to me when I saw the Only Murders in the Building episode featuring a “ghost light”: “a theatrical tradition that calls for a single bulb to remain lit on a stage even when the rest of the theater is literally (and figuratively) dark” (IMDB). This provides helpful context regarding the new indie dramedy Ghostlight, now available for streaming.
More germane to the story, there’s also in Ghostlight a metaphorical process of finding light in the darkness within a certain family—played, I should mention, by real-life couple and bona-fide actors Keith Kupferer and Tara Mallen and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer.
An angry construction worker, Dan (Keith), is surprised to be recruited into a small community theater rehearsing Romeo and Juliet. His reluctant and secretive participation contrasts with his daughter’s interest in acting and his wife’s role as director of kids’ theater.
Notably, film critic Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, advises that the story is meant, for maximum viewing benefit, to unfold naturally; reviews may give too much away. I would caution the same about this trailer:
For readers who do want more info before seeing Ghostlight, here is Ebiri’s explanation of the layering of the plot:
For much of its running time, the film only hints at what’s actually troubling Dan and his family. It’s not a secret, exactly — the clues are pretty easy to put together — but the revelation of their tragedy still hurts like a kick to the teeth. [Directors] O’Sullivan and Thompson flirt with something that ordinarily would feel like a narrative cheat: hiding from the audience an important piece of backstory that is otherwise known by most of the characters in the story…In Ghostlight, however, it feels emotionally true, because the family itself refuses to acknowledge what’s happened. It’s not until they’re finally meeting with their attorney, wriggling like insects pinned to a wall, when we start to get the full, brutal picture. They, too, are dancing around their trauma — understandably so, because it’s too awful to bear.
What the filmmakers let you see in the earliest stages (Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com) is that “Dan is sullen and a bit of a space case at work. He has a hair-trigger temper that suddenly erupts through his personal fog and causes severe problems. Daisy also has a temper and is being disciplined for an outburst at her school. She uses profanity in settings where nobody uses profanity and doesn’t care that a taboo is being violated. Sharon is a dutiful, attentive wife and mom who seems to be hanging on by a thread.”
Please feel free to stop reading here because now comes The Biggest Spoiler that I need to mention because this is a mental health space, after all.
Romeo and Juliet is, of course, a tragedy about young lovers who die by suicide. The family is a mess because Daisy’s older brother and his girlfriend had attempted joint suicide; the latter was the only survivor.
Therapy anyone? As is so often the case in real life, the child is the one targeted to see the shrink. When she eventually requests her dad’s involvement (he’s quite available because he’s lost his job), it turns out he can’t hack it and abruptly leaves the session.
Dan does gradually make his own emotional progress, though. It unfolds via the play rehearsals—a sort of drama therapy, if you will. His wife, left out of both Daisy’s therapeutic process (presumably, Mom has to be at her job) and his until the tail end of rehearsals, ultimately takes benefit from the work they’ve both done.
