A Ghost Story
I seldom see a movie so unique that I want to tell people to just go see it without knowing anything about it, including my review. David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” is one of those movies. So in the first paragraph of this review I’m going to implore you to do exactly that go see it and then come back here. If you want more information, read on. There are no spoiler warnings after this because as far as I’m concerned, anything I could say about this film would be a spoiler.
This is a ghost story about a man who dies young and stays around the property where he and his wife once lived. It will be one of the most divisive films of the year. Going in, all I knew about it was that the main character was a person who dies and spends the rest of the movie walking around mute, wearing a white sheet with eyeholes cut out of it.
It is a ghost story only in the way that there happens to be a ghost in it, but it is also several other things: A love story; a science fiction inflected tale about time travel/time loops; an essay on loneliness and denial and the ephemeral nature of flesh and anxiousness over what comes next after consciousness ceases (assuming there’s nothing); et cetera.
The characters are so archetypal that they don’t even have names, just initials. C (played by Casey Affleck) is a musician who lives with his wife M (Rooney Mara) in a small house surrounded by vacant property somewhere amidst Texas’ infinite flatnesses. C dies early in a car crash but continues hanging around as an invisible ghost haunting his widow’s grief and her eventual move out from their shared home; then staying put when new tenants arrive a single mom (Liz Franke) with two kids (Carlos Bermudez and Yasmina Guiterrez) and some young, single people who throw parties with lots of bohemian artist types; time keeps skipping forward until at a certain point the house is leveled to make way for a gigantic luxury condo-hotel type of thing. C sticks around where he died, as if he were going through the “denial” stage of grieving.
There are two super interesting things about this movie’s form: One is its decision to keep Casey Affleck under that sheet for most of the running time; the other is its habit of moving on from one scene or sequence to another not with a dissolve or fade to black or other standard signifier that a lot of time has passed between point A and B, but simply by making a hard cut.
The sheet deprives the film’s leading man of most tools that he’d normally be able to use in order to communicate emotion. He must approach the character as if he were onstage in a play where gestures matter more than words, and try to convey surprise or sadness or anger by, say, holding his head and shoulders in just such a way or turning quickly rather than slowly around to look at something.
However, it creates a different type of relationship between the character and the viewer: I think of C as we did when we played with dolls or stuffed animals as children. Such basic, strong feelings can be aroused in this way, and it is such emotions this film excels at. For long stretches I was reminded of European art cinema classics like “Stalker” or “The Passenger,” which ask you to commit to staring at what they’ve put in front of you and figure out how it might be meaningful and what you feel about it. At other points the film is like a guiltier “Groundhog Day,” folding guilt, karma and fear of change into a story that might have been a light diversion.
The hard cuts that move us through the story indicate that time passes differently for C than for us. Involving decay (the context is one I didn’t expect to find myself discussing), one scene becomes another in about half a minute through cuts when what had been a body turns into a skeleton. The longer we stay with C’s story, the more Lowery plays with our sense of time until by the end he’s asking us if experience isn’t singular and linear after all. (“A Ghost Story” would make an interesting double feature with Shane Carruth’s “Primer” or Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” two other Texas films about time perception/experience.)
“A Ghost Story” feels thrillingly new, sometimes off puttingly so; it’s not always clear how to take it. There are moments where one seems to hand you keys to interpretation, but I wouldn’t look at those scenes for answers; they seem designed to rope a dope anyone inclined to sneer at this kind of movie anyway. This is not a film that tends answer questions so much as pose them let alone bestow life advice though humanity could do worse than listen to its lengthy monologue by a party guest (Will Oldham) about our doomed attempts to leave traces that last, especially through art; it suggests that one of C’s songs for M may outlive him, but we have no way of knowing.
The way the film shows ghosthood as an in-between state where individuals who can no longer have life refuse to move on from it does not contradict many Western religions’ notions of what happens after death, though I don’t think resolving C’s story gives us any hope for Heaven; it seemed more like advice to accept that we may never know the answers to these questions.
I ought to confess that anything I say will be tentative. “A Ghost Story” is a film that I need to watch again, in order to free myself of preconceptions that may have lodged in my mind during the first viewing. The story is so simple and the situations are so patiently observed that the movie achieves a disarming purity; it’s as if Lowery stuck a tap into his subconscious and recorded one of his dreams straight onto film.
It’s probably as close as many people will come to seeing a late-period silent movie on a big screen a melodrama of big ideas and obvious symbols, which conveys its fantastical conceits (a ghost haunting the landscape over decades) by putting a sheet over its leading man and having him shuffle slowly around, staring blankly at things. (The cinematographer, Andrew Droz Palermo, shoots the picture in the old fashioned, squareish “Academy” ratio, so you can see the rounded edges of the frame; this has a narrowing effect so you seem to be spying on somebody else’s life through a keyhole.)
People seem to love “A Ghost Story” or hate it; there isn’t much middle ground. After festival screenings last winter and this spring, most reviews were raves; but, now that we’re on the eve of its commercial release, I find myself arguing with colleagues who think it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes who find it precious or sentimental or too much of a one joke movie or not enough of one thing or another. I loved every bit of it including those scenes where what was happening wasn’t clear to me at all. And I would recommend seeing it in an actual theater because this is very much a movie about time and permanence as well as love and death: sitting there alone thinking about what you’ve seen and how it’s shown you is part of its power.
Mostly what I have to offer is provisional, I should say that. To dispel any preconceived notions I may have had during my first viewing of “A Ghost Story,” I will need to see the film again. It tells such a simple story, and its situations are so observantly slow that it seems pure, as if Lowery stuck a tap into his subconscious and recorded one of his dreams directly onto film.
This might be the closest many people come to watching a late period silent movie on a big screen: A melodrama about big ideas with obvious symbols, which wraps ghostly conceits (the haunting of a landscape by a ghost over decades) around its leading man in a sheet and has him shuffle slowly around staring blankly at things. (Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo shoots the picture in the old-fashioned squareish “Academy” ratio, so you can see the rounded edges of the frame; this has a narrowing effect so you seem to be spying on somebody else’s life through a keyhole.)
People seem to love “A Ghost Story” or hate it; there isn’t much middle ground here. After festival screenings last winter and this spring most reviews were raves; but now that we’re on the eve of its commercial release I’ve found myself arguing with colleagues who think it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes who find it too precious or sentimental or much of a muchness or not enough of one thing or another. I loved every bit of it including those scenes where what was happening wasn’t clear to me at all and would recommend seeing it in an actual theater because very much this is a movie about time and permanence as well as love and death: sitting there alone thinking about what you’ve seen and how it’s shown you is part of its power.
There is no middle ground when discussing whether someone loves or hates “Ghost Story”. During festival screenings it received many positive reviews, but on the verge of its release I’ve found myself arguing with coworkers about whether it’s precious or sentimental, a one-joke movie or not enough of something. I loved everything about “Ghost Story” including scenes I wasn’t sure how to take. It is best viewed in a theater because besides being about love and death this film also has much to say about our perception of time and permanence. The impact that it has comes from sitting through without interruption and thinking what does this mean? How does this work?”
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