Recensioni di Metacritic

O’Sullivan and Thompson gently fold their story together, finding humor and heart at every turn . . . leading to the kind of ending that somehow inspired the film’s very first audience at Sundance to laugh and cry.

While the show that ends the film might overstay its welcome a bit, Ghostlight is a profound work about a tough family made tougher by unimaginable grief.

Any critic sitting through their show probably wouldn’t have much patience for all the characters’ personal catharses, but seen from the right distance, as beautifully told as this, the experience amounts to something special.

Ghostlight bridges the gap between art and reality, blending a poignant narrative that aims to better understand a loved one and the expression of grief.

Directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson are extraordinarily perceptive in highlighting the instances where stagecraft informs everyday life.

Ghostlight is a comedy in a loose sense, a tragedy in another, and a redemption song in yet one more. More succinctly, it’s a Thompson film, meaning it gently, tenderly unpacks and embodies every single feeling its characters might have about their situation at hand.

As the pieces of Ghostlight continue to unfold, it becomes increasingly clear what a smart and moving narrative O’Sullivan has put together.

The Kupferer-Mallens are Chicago theater stalwarts, having founded their own company, and the affection everyone involved with this project feels for the stage – as an art, therapy and practice – is so evident as to be contagious, even in the film’s most theater-y meta moments.

Ghostlight becomes a love letter to the power of theater, to the power of the timeless written word, to move us, to make us feel, to change us.

O’Sullivan and Thompson’s touch isn’t subtle, but it’s generous and, at times, gently inventive; they don’t sidestep clichés so much as configure and reconfigure them in satisfying, sometimes stirring fashion.