Movie of the Week: A Ghost Story
A haunting depiction of death and the inevitable, constant passage of time. Yes I am aware of puns.
“A writer writes a novel, a songwriter writes a song… We do what we can to endure.”
David Lowery’s cosmic drama A Ghost Story isn’t quite like anything I’ve seen in my (admittedly limited) movie-watching life. It is very rare for any film to tackle such big issues as this one does– death, love, loss, time– let alone to do so in such subtle and nuanced ways. This is not Interstellar. A Ghost Story is a slow-burning 90 minutes of contemplation about post-death existence. It asks questions about our place and purpose in the universe and what happens to our legacy after we’re gone. Most will find the answers implied by this film to be discomforting.
Although there are some highly philosophical, and perhaps uncomfortable, themes at play at the heart of A Ghost Story, they do not make up the entirety of the film. There is a more than effective love story at the center of the movie; Lowery’s depiction of a couple torn apart by death serves as a perfect foundation to view this film solely through the lens of a romantic drama. However, the heights that A Ghost Story reaches are due to his taking that romantic drama and throwing it into a broiling pit of existential contemplation.
A Ghost Story kicks off by introducing us to the central couple of the film. Portrayed by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, they lead a quiet, simple, although seemingly happy life in the suburbs together. While they have their standard marital squabbles about big and small issues alike (Mara wants to move onto bigger and better things, Affleck wants to remain in their quaint home), it is clear that they love each other very much. Unfortunately for them, and really for all of us I suppose, death is right around the corner. Early on, Affleck’s character is killed in a car crash on the street right outside their home. What Lowery captures in the time that follows Affleck’s death is simultaneously a profound depiction of someone dealing with extreme grief (Mara), as well as a fascinating thought experiment about a possible form of the afterlife (Affleck).
Mara turns in an incredible performance as a person who is hit with such a sudden and intense loss that she is almost not sure how to deal with it at all. She goes through the motions of her continued life, unsure of what to do or where to go next. Her emotions come seeping out at points, but it is a wonderfully subtle take on someone so bereaved that they are ultimately just numb while they try to put the pieces back together. No scene better exemplifies this than one in which Mara sits down and eats an entire pie, delivered as a condolence from a friend, in one dragged out, painful take, until she has to rush to the bathroom and throw it all up (it’s a memorable scene, to say the least). If this sounds like a fun time, just wait until you hear what kinds of shenanigans Affleck gets into.
We only see the grieving process of Mara’s character because we are following Affleck’s. Moments after Mara leaves his body at the hospital, he simply sits up, the sheet that at one point covered his corpse now covering whatever the hell he is now, and walks away. Slightly confused, he makes his way through the hospital, seeing everyone going about their business, none of them noticing him. He is offered a brief opportunity to move on to some sort of vague and secular “Great Beyond,” but he decides to forgo this, electing to walk home instead.
Affleck, still under his sheet, makes his way home, and once he is there, that is where we spend the rest of the movie. He watches over his wife, unable to ease her pain, unable to do anything as she slowly allows herself to move on. Eventually, she moves away. Affleck stays, observing the tenants of the home that come and go over an ambiguous number of years. Time passes; sometimes slowly, sometimes instantaneously. The ghost watches as his home eventually becomes vacant and run-down, is torn to the ground, and a giant office building is built in its place. Any semblance of home that he once clung to is now definitively gone.
If this description makes it sound like A Ghost Story is an incredibly dark film, that’s because it is. It’s brilliant, and one of the most moving films I’ve seen in a long, long time. But it’s heavy. The reason for this is because A Ghost Story goes beyond the idea of death, even though that is at the center of this movie, and takes on a much more formidable adversary: Time. Whether it’s a drunken monologue in the middle of the movie (see: the quote at the top of this piece), or the rapid passing of time that Affleck’s character witnesses in the last twenty minutes, the thesis of the film seems to be: time is terrifyingly vast. In billions of years the universe will contract back to the size of a single atom. Nothing– wealth, fame, accomplishments– survives the constant march of time (Well, there is one thing that, perhaps, does. But that’s why you watch the movie).
Lowery’s contraction and expansion of time within scenes of the film delivers his point to perfection. There is minimal dialogue (Affleck doesn’t speak at all as the ghost), and a number of scenes play out similarly to the pie scene described above: minutes of almost nothing happening, dragging out moments to mimic how they feel in real life. At other points in the film, however, the ghost’s sense of time is warped to the point of skipping large chunks at once; one second he is standing in the torn-down rubble of what used to be his home, the next moment he’s wandering through a skyscraper erected in its place. Lowery warps time throughout A Ghost Story in order to highlight his point that we are infinitesimal in its scope.
This idea may be too uncomfortable for a lot of viewers to face (shit, it put me in a funk for, like, three days after watching it), but the ultimate message that Lowery is trying to convey is not one of utter hopelessness. Is there a grand afterlife beyond Earth? Even this film doesn’t really try to answer that– no one knows. But even if there isn’t, even if we’re all destined to simply be gone one day and forgotten some day after that, the time that we get is not meaningless. We have our happiest memories. Our closest friends. Our strongest loves. All of which we accumulate over our entire lives.
Maybe that’s all we get. Maybe that’s all we need. I don’t know. Until we each find out for ourselves, though, it sounds like a perfectly good answer to me.
Should you see it?
“I’m looking for a Scooby-Doo-esque caper with hijinks and laughs all around.”– Who isn’t? Not happening here.
“I like fast-paced movies with quick dialogue.”– A Ghost Story is about 90 minutes long but it feels longer than that. Not a lot of dialogue, in some scenes not a lot of anything going on at all (part of the movie’s brilliance in my opinion). So you may not love it if you prefer fast-paced things.
“How does the movie look/sound?”– Awesome. There are some wonderful images/cinematography throughout the entirety of the movie, as well as amazing music, that will please anyone who is interested in those things.
“Is it scary?”– Only if you find the idea of eternity scary.
“Am I going to need to see this to keep up with awards season?”– Interestingly enough, this doesn’t look like a real awards-season contender. Just about every indicator seems to be in agreement that this is not an Oscar nominee. I haven’t seen all of the movies of the year yet, but I am already leaning towards disagreeing with the consensus. Lowery wrote/directed an amazing film, the score is very good, and Rooney Mara is phenomenal (Affleck is under a sheet and not speaking for 70 of the 90 minutes in the film). This is probably my favorite movie of the year. It is also probably not going to get nominated for much. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether I or the awards panels are dumb.
“This whole thing bummed me out.”– Sorry.
Next Week: Lady Bird.