A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story – A musician dies and leaves behind his grieving partner. But his ghost watches over her, and as time passes inexorably on, the ghost watches as people and settings change; but still it lingers.

A Ghost Story (2017) – Director: David Lowery

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53612312

Rating: 12

Running Length: 92 mins

Starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance

REVIEW: ‘A GHOST STORY’

When a movie spends literally 5 minutes with an unbroken shot of a woman eating a whole pie, you know that this isn’t a normal ‘ghost story’.

With very minimal plotting, ‘A Ghost Story’ features a recently deceased musician (Affleck) who returns to his home to watch his grieving wife. The ghost is a simple Affleck under a bedsheet with eye holes cut out, but is installed with such gravitas that any immediate sense of ludicrousness is swiftly swept away. This is a ghost in the most disconnected sense of the word. He drifts, listlessly and aimlessly. Unseen by anyone, his silent presence watching those around him is haunting in a completely different sense to normal.

Director Lowery makes his artistic vision known straight away by framing the whole movie in a box like ratio, employing snail paced scenes and shots as if any movement would be an affront to atmosphere, and having a soundscape so sparse that any noise at all can be startling. And yet, whilst in theory this is all very mood setting and effective, the sheer languid pace of almost nothing happening pushes patience beyond the limits of entertainment.

It is impossible to deny the beauty that comes from minimalism. As the ghost watches time march on, his home be demolished, office blocks built, and then (in a backwards leap through time) a ‘cowboy’ settlement get overrun, the utter disconnect from life is well done. A truly emotional song created by Affleck’s character before he died gets centre stage mid way through and lends some needed heart to proceedings. And the ghost’s focus on completing something left unfinished adds a palpable sense of loss. But this really should have been a short film. At an hour and a half what little material there is stretched so far that, well, you get a 5 minute shot of Rooney Mara eating pie.

CONTENT: IS ‘A GHOST STORY’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

A man and a woman are startled awake. The man goes to explore the house looking for the source of the noise whilst the woman stands in the door way, holding sheets over herself. The camera angle is from behind her and so we see bare back only. They go back to bed and kiss lovingly in a long shot lasting several minutes. However nothing more intimate happens any they drift off to sleep.

The camera slowly pans across the front of the house. Some smoke is seen billowing across shot until we get to the site of a car crash. A slow zoom reveals the man who lives in the house motionless with his head against the steering wheel. The scene lingers on him for over a minutes and there is some blood on his forehead at the impact point.

The next scene is a morgue. The woman must identify him and his body is on a gurney. He has a cut across his forehead but this isn’t gory or graphic. The sheet is pulled back and the woman identifies him. She leaves and the sheet is laid back over him. Once they leave, the camera stays on the sheet covered body for several minutes at a distance until he sits up, still covered. He gets off the gurney and walks around the hospital, completely covered by the sheet. No-one can see him.

The woman who lives in the house brings another man home. She kisses him and the ghost is implied to get angry. The musical score thrums, lights flicker, and the ghost knocks something over which startles the woman. A low, threatening camera angle is used. However, this isn’t played for scares and is more practically based.

Another family moves into the house. The ghost walks through some walls until he ends up in the children’s bedroom. The boy hears a thump and wakes up. A long shot of the wardrobe door is shown and the handle moves. The door creaks open. We can see the ghost but the children can’t. However, they run from the bedroom crying for their parents. The family is Spanish and subtitles aren’t used so we don’t know what they are saying.

The ghost becomes annoyed by the family living in his home and he lifts a glass of milk whilst they are at dinner and smashes it on the floor. He then opens cupboards and throws plates whilst the lights flicker. The mother and children are scared and cower by the wall.

The house is occupied by new people again with a large party. A couple kiss passionately and close a bedroom door behind them. A man spends a long time talking about the pointlessness of existence but shouts out ‘hey, who has kids? Your kids are gonna die’.

The ghost falls back in time to a settler period. A family are shown with horses and carriages. A young girl writes a note and leaves it under a rock but whooping noises of Native Americans can be faintly heard. The scene suddenly cuts to the man, dead on a log with arrows in his back. This is a long shot and lingered on. The girl (who was around 6 – 8 years old) is also dead, lying face up with arrows in her chest. Dark blood stains can be seen at the impact points This is shown for around ten seconds before cutting back to the ghost. The shot then cuts back to the girl again only this time she is partly decomposed with a sunken-in skull. This switches back and forth a few times until she is nothing but a skeleton in overgrown grass. Each part is less than 10 seconds.

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘A GHOST STORY’ FOR KIDS?

Absolutely not. Not in the sense the there is much unsuitable content (indeed, aside from the dead child scene and two instances of cursing this should have been a ‘PG’) but because we can’t imagine any child sitting through an hour and a half of extremely long shots where very little happens. Even for adults it could be a stretch, but essentially the movie would be way too dull! ‘A Ghost Story’ is definitely not aimed at kids at all but for sheer ‘content’ reasons we would say it is appropriate for children aged 7 or over, depending on your feelings of one strong use of cursing.

• Violence: 1/5
• Emotional Distress: 2/5
• Fear Factor: 1/5
• Sexual Content: 1/5
• Bad Language: 3/5 (infrequent but one strong use and one moderate use)
• Dialogue: 1/5
• Other Notes: Deals with themes of mourning, loss, haunting, regret, death, passage of time, and eating pies.

Words by Mike Record

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