A Ghost Story

What hap­pens to us when we die? It’s a big ques­tion all right, arguably the basis of all reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy and art, a cor­ner­stone of the human con­di­tion. And yet the head-scratch­er at the heart of David Lowery’s ele­gant, ele­giac lat­est is not a ​‘what’ but a ​‘how’. Shot through with anguish and yearn­ing but cru­cial­ly devoid of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, the film hinges on a heavy exis­ten­tial conun­drum: after we shuf­fle over to the oth­er side, how long do we con­tin­ue to exist in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind?

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck pre­vi­ous­ly starred along­side each oth­er in Ain’t Them Bod­ies Saints, Lowery’s soul­ful sec­ond fea­ture from 2013, and they reunite to equal­ly potent effect here, once again play­ing a young cou­ple sep­a­rat­ed by cir­cum­stance. Ear­ly on we see them view­ing a mod­est bun­ga­low in sub­ur­ban Texas, which they buy and soon set­tle into. For a while, every­day snap­shots build a large­ly hap­py pic­ture of their life togeth­er. They begin mak­ing plans for the future, and although his occu­pa­tion as a strug­gling musi­cian threat­ens to cre­ate a rift between them, the love they share is pure and plain to see.

Then tragedy strikes.

Cloaked in a white sheet with eye­holes con­ve­nient­ly cut out, Affleck (we can only assume it is indeed the actor beneath the car­toon­ish cos­tume) quite lit­er­al­ly becomes a spec­tral pres­ence, pas­sive­ly observ­ing Mara’s char­ac­ter as she attempts to rec­on­cile her grief with the real­i­ty that life goes on. In the film’s stand­out scene, Low­ery films her cry-eat­ing an entire pie in an unbro­ken five-minute take. Grief can be sud­den and all-con­sum­ing, but it can also man­i­fest itself grad­u­al­ly in per­fect­ly mun­dane ways, and this moment is by turns mes­meris­ing in its sim­plic­i­ty and dev­as­tat­ing in its emo­tion­al scope.

Explor­ing the var­i­ous stages of bereave­ment from one woman’s per­spec­tive isn’t Lowery’s sole inten­tion though, and even­tu­al­ly he shifts the focus away from Mara. Lat­er, long after her char­ac­ter has said good­bye to the house, Will Old­ham aka Bon­nie ​“Prince” Bil­ly appears in cameo at a din­ner par­ty where he deliv­ers a Niet­zschean mono­logue about the notion of lega­cy. It’s an unapolo­get­i­cal­ly pre­ten­tious rumi­na­tion on the futil­i­ty of exis­tence that reveals some­thing of Lowery’s own agnos­tic take on mor­tal­i­ty – if our souls real­ly do endure, per­haps it is places, not peo­ple, they are des­tined to haunt.

Years pass. As the house falls into dis­re­pair the ghost remains sym­bol­i­cal­ly shack­led to its pal­lid walls, until final­ly Low­ery folds the film in on itself and we jump back to an unspec­i­fied peri­od when this small plot of land was lit­tle more than dirt and grass, when Amer­i­ca was still the New World. By dis­rupt­ing the film’s frag­ment­ed yet hith­er­to lin­ear rhythm in this way, Low­ery fur­ther implies that the dead are not bound by the same laws of physics, time and log­ic which gov­ern the liv­ing. It’s also an oblique nod to Texas’ most famous film­mak­ing son, Ter­rence Mal­ick, who has explored love, loss and life’s jour­ney in not dis­sim­i­lar fash­ion, and whose influ­ence Low­ery open­ly acknowledges.

The most imme­di­ate sen­sa­tion con­jured by A Ghost Sto­ry is that of time pass­ing. It’s about how even our most pre­cious mem­o­ries are per­ish­able, how human beings invari­ably fade into the hazy ether of his­to­ry. (Lowery’s deci­sion to shoot in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with round­ed cor­ners soft­en­ing the frame, enhances the film’s time­less, dream­like tone.) Less direct­ly, it also feels like a com­ment on con­tem­po­rary liv­ing in an age of con­stant dis­trac­tions and stunt­ed atten­tion spans. A slow-burn mod­ern goth­ic that rewards patience and repeat view­ings, this is a strange, cap­ti­vat­ing work, much like the sight of a man dressed head-to-toe in a white sheet.