A GHOST STORY. Ghosts in Captivity [REVIEW]

“Everything is on time,” reads the tagline of the American poster for A Ghost Story (2017). And that’s basically all that can be said about David Lowery’s film in a review. It’s the kind of movie where revealing anything about its plot—heavily reliant on details—can unintentionally ruin the unique feeling that accompanies every second of the screening. In this story about a ghost (which, it’s worth noting immediately, is not a horror film), you won’t experience any unexpected plot twists punctuated by a strong Fincher-esque ending.

A Ghost Story is undoubtedly a captivating cinematic experience, fully suspenseful, often reaching for literal metaphysics and transcendence, but it haunts with sorrowful reflections on life, not basement specters. The central axis of the story is the relationship of a young married couple, named M (Rooney Mara) and C (Casey Affleck). She dreams of moving to a bigger, better place; he, a sentimental soul, prefers to stay in their small house for life. The film’s setting is once again Texas, and because of the same acting duo, A Ghost Story seems like a suggestive continuation of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013).

As in the earlier film, Lowery uses the characters’ home (both the house and the entire state) to define them, drawing on familiar associations and Southern U.S. traditions. However, his latest work is detached from the prairie landscape by the presence of the titular ghost, who looks like a child dressed up for a school party. The white sheet with eye holes strangely gives the character human qualities: from the moment the ghost appears on screen, we find ourselves rooting more for its actions than for the flesh-and-blood characters.

Generally, A Ghost Story relies on simple but remarkably effective ideas. My favorite example is the way Lowery distinguishes between a male and a female ghost using only costume design. The way he blends the fairy-tale and the hyper-realistic nature of the story, while fully utilizing the possibilities of the film medium, is impressive—and in its simplicity, paradoxically innovative. The concept of time—which cannot truly be depicted in an image—being somehow materialized by Lowery in the film is expressed through cinematic means and the use of space, which is the only limitation for the film’s characters.

This confirms the belief that ghosts don’t leave their places. For Lowery, the typical single-story Texas house is a character in its own right, sometimes telling us more about someone than their meaningful gestures or spoken words. A change in lighting, wall color, or the way a scene is shot is enough for the viewer to know that we are now in a different moment and time of the story. Lowery emphasizes this through editing as well: each storyline has its own rhythm appropriate to the events, which helps the viewer navigate time and space. If you’re still traumatized by the seemingly endless scene in Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), Lowery tests the viewer’s patience in a similar way, observing the protagonist eating a pie in a widely discussed, very long master shot.

It’s incredible that in a film under an hour and a half long, the American director includes such a scene—and keeps its full significance for the whole. “I love time, which is a very relative concept. Childhood, holidays, adulthood. Everything has its own time that influences who you become in the future,” said the director at a meeting in Wrocław. He also admitted that he wrote the film’s script in one night, while struggling with depression. Later, in silence and on a small budget, he shot the film with Hollywood stars. This honest approach to the subject, supported by a therapeutic urge to speak about the loss of a loved one, creates a unique, elegiac love story. A Ghost Story is a film that demands great patience and focus, relying on moments that resonate especially in the here and now, during the act of watching. Perhaps because of the ghosts, it’s a kind of spiritual séance? In any case, I rarely get the impression—as I did here—that experiencing a film is more a matter of sensitivity than of any category of taste. It’s best to know as little as possible about A Ghost Story before watching. Written by Piotr Szczyszyk.