A Ghost Story (2017)

In a sequence that will surely go down in history as some of the greatest long takes ever, Mara rage-eats almost an entire vegan chocolate pie on camera
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Mara’s performance is incredibly moving, even though she barely has a handful of lines in the entire film
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This film disturbed me way more than most conventional horror movies, because Lowery understands that the really frightening part of any haunted house tale isn’t the ghost or the demon or the everyday objects moving of their own accord.

Rooney Mara no longer likes pie, for good reason.

Ghost's most memorable scene, according to social media, is a roughly nine-minute, uninterrupted take of Mara’s character stress-eating nearly an entire pie before throwing up. “I’m really thankful to Rooney for going for it, because I know she doesn’t like sweets,” Lowery says. His hope for the scene — shot over an hour with a vegan chocolate-pudding pie — was to show “grieving that felt unique, uncomfortable and profound. Sometimes when I’m upset, I just eat a lot. I thought that would be a really powerful image.”

1. A Ghost Story

Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo

Director: David Lowery (Pete's Dragon)

Why it's great: That Lowery conceived this dazzling, dreamlike meditation on the afterlife during the off hours on his recent Disney blockbuster makes the revelations within even more awe-inspiring. A Ghost Story follows Affleck's musician character in the wake of a fatal accident, which leaves him as a sheet-draped spirit who haunts the home of his widowed wife (Mara). With stylistic quirks and enough winks to resist pretension (a scene where Mara devours a pie in one five-minute, uncut take is both tragic and cheeky), Lowery connects the dots between romantic love, the places we call home, and the space-time continuum -- a ghost's worst enemy.

Where you'll see it: In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video this year


Best Sundance 2017

"The more I reflect on David Lowery‘s A Ghost Story, the more it emerges as my favorite film since The Tree of Life, a film that attempts similarly ambitious feats. I wrote in my review from Sundance, “Beginning with the beauty, patience, and humor of an Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie before segueing into the existential musings reminiscent of Richard Linklater dialogue, and then infinitely expanding its scope to become a stunning meditation on the passage of time, A Ghost Story is one of the most original, narratively audacious films I’ve ever seen.”

Jordan Raup

Lowery smothers this imagery with a thick layer of ambient sound, like a throbbing train that never reaches the station. It all combines for a visceral statement on the indifference of time. Dreams, inspiration, and communication have no relevance here. In fact, the only meaningful dialogue is an impassioned soliloquy delivered by a drunken party philosopher on the futility of ambition itself.



A Ghost Story isn’t simply an artistic exercise to be enjoyed by daring cinephiles. It’s a beautiful and, quite literally, haunting portrait of our frail humanity. It might seem depressing were it not such a strident affirmation of our existence in this universe, no matter how fleeting. By contrast, David Lowery has crafted a powerful film that will only improve with time.





www.popmatters.com/review/sundance-2017-before-i-fall-a-ghost-story/


"A Ghost Story" reminds us that we are both wildly insignificant and unbelievably important in the same moment. When considered against the grand canvas of history, both past and present, our actions can’t be deemed essential to an understanding of humanity’s greater issues. There were likely people in your house before you were there, and there will likely be people there after you die. And yet considering ourselves as mere specks on the timeline of existence misses the power of the little moments in our lives. Our actions are both insignificant and essential ... at the same time. Lowery’s film captures something about our place in the greater scheme of the world and the beauty of the moment in a way that feels completely fresh and unbelievably moving. This isn’t a movie so much about grief—we’ve had a lot of those lately—as it’s about understanding the greater ebb and flow of human existence. Grief is merely a part of the historical canvas.

And yet while that may sound unbelievably heavy and pretentiously philosophical, the true miracle of “A Ghost Story” is that it’s never heavy-handed or moralizing. In fact, there’s almost no dialogue at all, and I’m not sure Lowery wants literal interpretations like the one I sorta offered in the previous paragraph. He’s made a film to lead you on your path, not to explicitly lay one out for you to follow. It’s a film that I can guarantee you people will revisit and discuss for years to come. It’s daring, strange, and unforgettable.





www.rogerebert.com/sundance/sundance-2017-a-ghost-story