‘Ghost Story’ a fascinating look at grief
Consider the white sheet. Such a simple, ubiquitous item can have so many loaded meanings. A bed, a costume, a shroud. The multifaceted uses of the sheet are explored in David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story,” a meditation on grief, loss and the essence of life from both sides of the veil. At times, this film is profoundly heartbreaking, in other moments, willfully obtuse, but always, there is the sheet, and what it symbolizes.
What better way to follow up an Academy Award than to don a sheet and remain hidden for the majority of a film? Casey Affleck follows up his award-winning turn in the grief drama “Manchester by the Sea” with another tale about death and the cycles of life in “A Ghost Story.” Mr. Affleck stars opposite Rooney Mara, and the two are wonderful together in the few scenes they share, as a young couple living in a humble, possibly haunted house. He dies in a car wreck and takes the form of a ghost, the kind of “Charlie Brown” Halloween specials — a sheet with two eyeholes — haunting his own home.
Mr. Lowery reverses the perspective of the grief process, to fascinating ends. We are aligned with his point of view as a ghost, and we palpably feel his own sense of loss, of his life, of his wife slipping away from him as she continues living. He’s tethered to their modest house, as he was in life, and as she moves on, he remains, through new tenants, families with kids, wild parties, philosophical discussions on the earth’s existence. It’s the cycle of life — destruction, development, creation, crumbling and so on.
“A Ghost Story” is shot in
Academy aspect ratio, a square frame with rounded edges, giving the film a feel of a private home movie. It offers a sense of intimacy that is almost claustrophobic at times. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo does beautiful work, utilizing ever so slow pans, tilts and precise dolly shots to gently telegraph story moments and inhabit a ghostly perspective. The score flutters and swoons on the strings and drums, coloring in the emotions internalized by Ms. Mara and Mr. Affleck.
As we drift further from the central love story, “A Ghost Story” becomes more and more abstract, and therefore, less compelling. It feels, in a way, like the central nugget of the idea could have been a stunning short film and the rest is extra padding to fill out a feature length movie. A diversion down a historical path seems to want to illustrate the cyclical nature of time, but only serves to obfuscate the message further.
The true resonance of “A Ghost Story” lies in the interaction between the ghost and his grieving wife, struggling to find ways to connect to each other again. Their missed connection, divided by the void of human existence, is also a beautifully sad and poignant representation for the ways in which we all strive or fail to connect in the present.