• A Ghost Story is a strange bird. It is a somber film where maybe 75 minutes of the 90-minute running time are spent watching a grown man wear a bedsheet over him like a ghost. It can also be described as an art-house version of 1990 film, Ghost, a story of the afterlife told from the deceased perspective.
  • This is David Lowery’s fourth film and his greatest to date in 2017. Here he is dedicated to the long take, and it is one of a slew of films to feature the rise of the boxy 1.33:1 frame (from First Reformed to The Lighthouse—American Honey is close to this as well).
  • Casey Affleck (he has collaborated with Lowery many times now) plays “C” and Rooney Mara plays “M” and this little ranch in Texas is as much a character as the two of them. They notice an eerie glow in the house, and C has a car accident early in the film. He stays in the house after death and watches M- but time shifts rapidly and Lowery, mostly without dialogue, explores the concept of time, the potential haunting of a house (because of an emotional pull).

As mentioned, Lowery’s tool here is the long take—but there are many scenes where there is just not much to look at. He holds on a nice composition of the ranch, or of the ghost broken up in an Ozu-like hallway framed by the doorways (exceptional)… but just as often he just showing Mara sitting on the ground (the famous pie eating long take from the 25-30 minute mark as she is in pain stabbing and shoveling at the food) or showing the two of them in bed… not doing much- and not overly beautiful to look at.

  • The frame within a frame doorway shots at the 19-minute mark are extremely impressive.
  • Lowery should be applauded for creating his own, uniquely patient quiet rhythm to the film.
  • Lowery often opts for a shallow focus—and it is a fitting use of the technique as the ghost is observing the other dimension- as the ghost is slicing through time.
  • Sublime use of the song “I Get Overwhelmed”- written by Daniel Hart, performed by Dark Rooms—it is tied to the narrative, this is C’s Beethoven symphony—tying to Will Oldham’s impressive monologue (he is in the film for five minutes and gets more dialogue than Affleck or Mara). There are little details in the film like the young prairie girl from the past humming this tune that reward study and a second viewing. The film meditates on time, legacy, faith in some ways.
  • The film is very ambitious in its concepts, but not always the filmmaking- and that makes the artistic achievement more modest than some would estimate.
  • A gorgeous composition at the 48-minute mark of the ghost in the living room facing the windows— another at the 65-minute mark with the piano set in a perfect mise-en-scene (above image) – these are Ozu’s interiors… or Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Lowery uses some of the same angles over the time periods to show change.
  • A few Death in Venice-like lyrical zooms as the ghost releases into the distant future.
  • The prologue has Virginia Woolf’s “Whatever house you woke there was a door shutting” from “A Haunted House” that gives the film a launching pad from which to ruminate.
  • A Recommend/ Highly Recommend border film