If you missed the theatrical run of big Oscar winner Anora, now is your chance to correct that as it reappears on local screens. Meanwhile, an acclaimed 2024 drama that didn’t make it to the Oscars recently popped up on Hulu. Ghostlight, from codirectors Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan (who also scripted), was named among the top 10 indie films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Shot in Waukegan, Ill., Ghostlight taps into a Midwestern working-class sensibility, with star Keith Kupferer looking like every guy you see on TV playing heavies, flunkies and salt-of-the-earth family men. Costarring here with his real-life wife and daughter, he defies all our expectations.
The deal
Dan Mueller (Kupferer) is angry — mostly quietly, sometimes loudly. His family suffered a recent loss, but he won’t talk about that. Instead, at his construction job, he yells at recalcitrant motorists. At home, he blows up at his wife (Tara Mallen) and their 16-year-old daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), who has her own rage issues — defying teachers and shouting at passing cars, just like Dad.
Dan’s theatrics catch the interest of Rita (Dolly de Leon), a washed-up professional actor who’s rehearsing Romeo and Juliet near his construction site with her community troupe, the Rube Mechanicals. She suggests he join them. Knowing nothing of Shakespeare, Dan is befuddled. But he doesn’t want to tell his family that he’s been suspended after a rage incident, so he agrees to attend daily rehearsals.
The production is bare-bones, with amateurs stretching to play multiple roles. Middle-aged Rita is dead set on being Juliet, and her much-younger Romeo quits after throwing a tantrum. At first, Dan has little use for these oddballs. But Shakespeare’s tragic story speaks to him, and Rita won’t take no for an answer. Ever so slowly, he succumbs to the magic of theater.
Will you like it?
Thompson and O’Sullivan pitched Ghostlight as “Waiting for Guffman meets Manchester by the Sea,” an odd couple if there ever was one. The movie works because of the expert hand with which they combine comedy and tragedy, moderating mildly absurdist humor with a hefty dose of kitchen-sink realism.
It’s easy to imagine a pandering take on this premise, in which a grumpy but lovable workingman learns to live and laugh again from a band of weirdo thespians. But Ghostlight features no oversold laugh lines or “Oscar clip” emotional meltdowns. No one pontificates about the glories of theater — or needs to. The directorial duo avoids the pitfalls of cliché at every turn, maintaining a transparent style so that the brilliance of the cast can shine through.
Kupferer needs no more than a few lines to show us both Dan’s fundamental decency and his fatal flaws. There’s no malice behind his anger, only frustration. “Both my kids are dramatic. They didn’t get it from me,” he insists, clinging to a strong-and-silent masculine ideal. But Rita knows better: Dan has big emotions, just like her, and he needs a safe outlet for them.
It’s as much fun to root for de Leon here as it was in Triangle of Sadness. Tart-tongued from years spent trying to make it on the New York stage, Rita is the Puck of the story, equal parts maker and trickster. When anyone questions her right to play a teenage ingénue, she reveals just how few fucks she has to give.
But Rita shows her tender side when she mentors Daisy, a theater kid who’s eager to join the production once she learns her dad’s secret. Mallen Kupferer has perfect chemistry with her real-life parents, and though her performance might initially seem broad, it grows on you. Precocious yet believably teenage, Daisy ends up delivering some of the most joyful moments of the film.
The pure joy of playacting is a leitmotif in Ghostlight, even as it convincingly depicts the Mueller family’s slow journey through and out of grief. When the story reaches its climax with the Rube Mechanicals’ one-night performance, the only disappointment is that we can’t watch the whole thing. Stars and bit players alike have come to feel like friends, and we want to see their full takes on the characters.
Even as Dan warms up to the troupe, he has big questions for them: Why do Romeo and Juliet have to die to create something beautiful onstage? Why must art concoct tragic scenarios when real life is already full of tragedy? These doubts about the value of mimetic art are as old as Plato and as young as TikTok posters arguing that depiction equals endorsement. But Ghostlight itself serves as the filmmakers’ answer. Anyone who’s ever found catharsis and community onstage will want to give these players a curtain call.
If you like this, try…
Saint Frances (2019; Cineverse, Kanopy, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Nominated for three Gotham Awards, the debut feature from Thompson and O’Sullivan stars the latter as a nanny who bonds with her 6-year-old charge.
His Three Daughters (2023; Netflix): In another recent indie that got no Oscar love, Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen play sisters at their father’s deathbed. You may find the chamber drama too stylized at first, but stick with it for heartbreaking performances from all three.
“Somebody Somewhere” (three seasons, 2022-2024; Max): If you like watching unglamorous, soft-spoken Midwesterners find unlikely forms of community, you can’t do much better than this anti-sitcom about a woman who returns to her Kansas hometown with her youthful dreams behind her.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2025.
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