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‘With only the faintest bit of explanation coming from another sheet-wearing ghost waving “hello” from a house across the way, we realize we’re stuck in this spot until something happens’ … Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in A Ghost Story.
‘With only the faintest bit of explanation coming from another sheet-wearing ghost waving “hello” from a house across the way, we realize we’re stuck in this spot until something happens’ … Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in A Ghost Story. Photograph: Andrew Droz Palermo/2016 Sundance Institute
‘With only the faintest bit of explanation coming from another sheet-wearing ghost waving “hello” from a house across the way, we realize we’re stuck in this spot until something happens’ … Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in A Ghost Story. Photograph: Andrew Droz Palermo/2016 Sundance Institute

A Ghost Story review: Casey Affleck channels Swayze in haunting love story

This article is more than 7 years old

The hereafter is a slow, subtle affair in David Lowery’s evocative followup to Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, in which bedsheet-clad Affleck watches over bereaved partner Rooney Mara

For a film that’s only 87 minutes long, A Ghost Story has nothing but time. This is a movie where, to the inevitable titters of those who don’t like a little formal experimentation, Rooney Mara sits on the kitchen floor and eats a condolence pie in one lengthy, unedited shot.

Is this director David Lowery pushing buttons, weeding out those with stamina from short-attention-span rubes? Maybe so, but your mind goes through stages when you watch one of our finer young actors mourn by methodically stuffing her face with pie. First you wonder, what kind of pie? It might be pumpkin, but it’s hard to tell from that angle. Next, did they do multiple takes of this? Mara is a quite slender woman, so if they did, it must have been tough. Eventually, though, your inner voice shuts up and you sit there and you just watch her eat the damn pie. It is a necessary transitional step the audience must take to understand the ghost haunting this house, and his lot in (after)life.

Yes, there is a ghost in A Ghost Story, played by Casey Affleck, but it’s hard to know for sure if it’s him as it’s just a bedsheet with two eye-holes cut out. (Indeed, the only “jokes” in this quiet, contemplative piece comes from the props and set design.)

Affleck and Mara (we never learn their characters’ names) are a couple who move into a new home. The first night they hear an odd plinking on the piano. Affleck, roused from sleep, achieves his final form as cinema’s finest mumbler. (I can’t even tell if he’s speaking or just emitting high-pitched vibrations anymore.)

We observe the terse, distant pair live their days, until Affleck ends up dead in a car wreck. After a long, static shot in which Mara identifies his corpse, he rises from the morgue, keeping the white sheet over his head.

The next section is watching dead Casey watch Rooney, until she eventually leaves. With only the faintest bit of explanation coming from another sheet-wearing ghost waving “hello” from a house across the way, we realize we’re stuck in this spot until something happens.

When a new family moves in (a Spanish-speaking mother and her two kids, whose dialogue is never subtitled) the movie head-fakes toward a typical spooky twist. Is this the “origin story” of the ghost that frightens families away? In a way, yes. But that’s only one chapter. Eternity lasts a very long time. A Ghost Story officially out-matches Steven Spielberg’s AI for patient characters.

Not all is explained in A Ghost Story, but enough is there for vibrant discussion to break out the minute the credits rolled. I’ve got my theories about it all, and what’s best is that other folks have differing, reasonable versions. What’s undeniable, though, is the creeping profundity that emerges from what could easily have been a dopey student short film idea.

Much of the success is due to outstanding cinematography (Lowery shoots in the 4:3 ratio, offering a more intimate frame) and evocative music. Characters slide in and out of our view, including a hipster doofus mansplaining over cans of beer, who surprisingly has one or two interesting observations about mortality beneath his obnoxious bravado.

It feels strange to say “this movie isn’t for everyone”, because so much of world culture is founded on guessing what happens after you die. Lowery’s version is a little sadder than most, but doesn’t feel any less plausible than others. And if you ever feel the presence of a lost loved one around you, maybe check the linen closet.

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