A Ghost Story - 2017
Much like Lanthimos’ The Lobster the previous year, I cannot even begin to recommend this film to a wide audience. It’s not about pretension. It’s about whether you would even be able to stomach a film that’s shot like a polaroid and mostly uses still long-takes to depict a ghost covered by a sheet. Could you hang with that if you knew you’d come away with “a hauntingly beautiful, visually stunning meditation on love, loss, life and legacy?”
The movie is a bit difficult to parse on the surface-level. So, you’ve got a young couple who love each other. They buy a place together. He’s an aspiring musician. She feels strange harbingers of heaviness coming and wants to leave. He wants to stay. It turns out she’s right because he has an accident and dies. Fortunately for us, his story doesn’t end there. Affleck returns (oh, did I mention the musician was Casey Affleck?) as a bedsheet-clad lost soul who opts to forego the afterlife in favor of watching over his grieving wife. Well, I guess that wasn’t too tough after all.
But, the story really doesn’t end there either. Though the ghost spends many long-takes portraying passing time watching his wife in mourning (one particularly affecting scene features Rooney Mara eating nearly all of a pie through tears until she’s forced to run and vomit), time begins to move on. Soon, a new family takes up residence in the home, then a group of squatters, and finally Affleck’s ghost goes on a metaphysical journey through the past, present, and future.
I’d be remiss before leaving if I did not mention the absolutely fantastic scene featuring the aforementioned squatters. At about the 1 hour mark, a bearded bald man in overalls sipping a craft brew can (a character the director dubbed The Prognosticator) launches into one of the more incredible dialogues in recent memory on the theme of legacy. His speech serves as the thesis of the whole tale, pondering everything from Beethoven’s 9th to space travel and the ever-present question: What do we really leave behind when we go? Is there really anything of lasting significance in the world? It’s A Ghost Story’s exploration of big, ultimate concerns like these which make it such a remarkable watch.
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