Director + Writer: David Lowery
“The Ghost has to live out the meaningless plodding of time just like us, only it can’t deceive itself into holding onto any of it. ”
I couldn’t have chosen a film less like From Dusk Till Dawn than the patience-testing stillness of A Ghost Story. The film is an exercise in understatement, with a blanket-covered ghost waiting through all the grief and loss we can’t see behind his eye-holes. The simplicity of Casey Affleck’s classic Halloween costume lends a built-in nostalgia that tells us right away that we’re heading into poignant indie territory. Add in appropriately sciencey constraints (the ghost can move through time but he is anchored in place) and we have an artful meditation on existence. Specifically, the difference between existing and living. We can’t see anything the ghost doesn’t, so we inherit its claustrophobia and, at times, its despair.
That said, not much else is handed to the viewer. The ghost’s bedsheet hides any emotional cues from us, leaving us with a blank stand-in for what used to be a life. I would argue that this film knowingly moves against clarity, choosing instead to meditate on waiting and not-knowing. This much is certain: Casey Affleck’s character dies in a car crash, leaving his girlfriend (played by Rooney Mara) to grieve in their house. Before she moves away, Mara tucks a handwritten note into a crack in the wall and paints over it. The Ghost spends the rest of the movie waiting, watching, ignoring or terrorizing subsequent inhabitants, returning to the wall every so often to scratch at the message hidden within.
I’ll admit, I’m a bundle of hypervigilant nerves so A Ghost Story seemed like a good way to pace my amygdala for October’s marathon of monster movies. It was perhaps too good a choice. Critics and fawners alike remarked that director David Lowery’s project felt like it belonged in a museum instead of a movie theater—its minimalism testing the edges (and necessities) of narrative. It is lonely in its surrealism, and frustrating in its refusal to outline meaning. The Ghost has to live out the meaningless plodding of time just like us, only it can’t deceive itself into holding onto any of it. The Ghost moves on a geologic timescale compared to the living, scratching at the note painted in the wall as years and homeowners pass.
The Ghost watches everything it longs for fade away, a shining futuristic city rising up in the Dallas suburbs it once knew. When the Ghost has had enough, it dives off a skyscraper only to land in the nineteenth century. The Ghost witnesses a settler girl hide a note under a rock before her family gets slaughtered by Native Americans (is there an emoji for “disgusted yawn” ?) and has to cycle back through time before finally catching up with its lost life.
People love to give movies credit for being difficult to watch, but there is something to be said for movies that make you think about everything happening onscreen. At times, I felt like I was reading the screen rather than watching it, scouring the mise-en-scene for possible clues. Yes, there are emotional moments but mostly there is a lot of emptiness. Apparently the smallness of Affleck’s movements was a response to the bedsheet itself. Rather than obscuring the human beneath, Lowery found that the sheet exaggerated a lot of Affleck’s acting. As a result, the movements became smaller, the blocking more contained. Sure, Affleck’s non-ghost scenes were competent in his usual mumbly way, but the Ghost felt more like a prop than the barometer of the film’s feeling. If anything, the audience mostly relies on cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo to communicate the ghost’s state through a cascade of day/night/city lights and flickering bulbs.
When I was deeply depressed and living in New Orleans, I once ate an entire King cake in a day. I was so bored and emptied out that sugar was the only thing that tapped into something resembling a sensory life. Since I inevitably ate the slice with a plastic baby in it, I went out and bought a second King cake. What I’m trying to say is Rooney Mara eats an entire pie in one take and I do not understand why the internet thinks it is hot. In this ninety-two minute ghost story, it was the one scene I found “too real.” You know, as we contemporary living humans say.
I was honestly annoyed with this film in the theater. I thought it could have accomplished everything it did in one-third of the time without losing any impact. However, I like thinking about this film much more than I liked watching it. Recent events also have me thinking differently about stillness and loss. I work in a very busy, very public place. Today was a quiet day and more than one person admitted that the massacre in Las Vegas made them reluctant to go out. I had conversations with almost-strangers where we admitted our helplessness to each other. A lot of people are waiting to feel better, or at the very least, for something to change.
I found myself wondering, What is waiting made of? It can feel quiet, furious, like the least reliable measure of time. In particular, waiting to “get better” feels a lot like grief. There’s numbness, hot and cool rage, a remote resignation. National traumas and personal losses alike leave us waiting around for answers, wondering, What’s the point of a body if you can’t hide inside it?
FINAL THOUGHTS
- In truth I am a little baffled that everyone keeps talking about how “profound” Affleck’s performance is, as it’s impossible to read nuance into his form. I’d even argue this mutedness is kind of the whole point? Some of his scenes were even reshot with a different guy under the blanket. Remembering the famous actor in costume only struck me as hilarious.
I think it's bullshit that the Ghost frightened off that Latinx family while tolerating Will Oldham's (yes, that Will Oldham) goofy nihilist monologue.
I spent some time arguing with myself today whether a ghost counted as a “creature.” My instincts tell me corporeal forms go against ghostliness, and that a lack of a body is a different horror than deformity. Weighed against pain and sickness, the idea of life without a body is almost a relief. Let’s see if my thoughts evolve on this one.