A Ghost Story (2017)

9. “A Ghost Story” David Lowery’s strange little movie starts out as a love story, gives way to suspense, and finally blossoms into an enigmatic and highly expressive evocation of time, place, collective memory and history, given extra aesthetic ballast by a squared-off frame reminiscent of family photo albums. Plus, Rooney Mara eats a pie. So there’s that.

14. A Ghost Story
A Ghost Story is definitely an actual ghost story (no misleading title here), but, while it’s haunting, it’s certainly not a horror film. Instead, as its rather perfect poster tagline posits, it’s all about time. Casey Affleck plays a white-sheeted ghost (you’ll end up on board with the concept pretty quickly), who returns to his suburban home to keep an eye on and try to console his bereft wife (Rooney Mara), only to find that his spectral state gets unstuck in time. And then things get... cosmic. To give a taste of its aesthetic sensibilities, think a blend of Under the Skin, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the patient works of directors Chantal Akerman and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Don’t come to it expecting Affleck and Mara to go crazy with a pottery wheel and a Righteous Brothers soundtrack.

3. A Ghost Story
Directed by David Lowery
David Lowery’s epic yet intimate consideration of grief, love, and death has haunted my 2017, ever since I saw it back in January at the Sundance Film Festival. In Park City I was stunned by its unexpected twists, and its audacious decision to follow Casey Affleck’s sheeted ghost on a swirling trip through the afterlife. Watching it again only increased my admiration, as I saw just how intricately Lowery plotted this story and its slippery depiction of time. If mankind still exists in the distant future after the last bit of the natural world has been paved over with looming skyscrapers haunted by the souls of the dead, people will still look to A Ghost Story for spiritual guidance.

4. “A Ghost Story” (David Lowery)
The movie’s dramatic power is inseparable from its quiet, sensuous splendor.

Sheri Linden's Top 10 Films
2. A Ghost Story

David Rooney's Top 10 Films
Honorable mentions: BMP (Beats Per Minute); Columbus; Dunkirk; The Florida Project; A Ghost Story; Jane; Marjorie Prime; Personal Shopper; Phantom Thread; Wonderstruck

10. “A Ghost Story”

David Lowery's supernatural drama, if that's indeed the best thing to call it, feels like something that was dreamt up and then hastily written down moments after awakening before the details faded. A man (Casey Affleck) dies suddenly, leaving his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) bereft; he lingers in the house in non-corporeal form, observing her grief but incapable of consoling her. This is more or less the starting point of Jerry Zucker's "Ghost," but "A Ghost Story" immediately goes in its own strange direction by visualizing the hero not as a transparent person or one surrounded by shimmering animated effects, but as a guy in a plain bedsheet with little eyeholes cut out, like a trick-or-treating child.

It's an inherently comical image, but the movie plays it straight, and somehow this one-joke premise doesn't feel like a joke, or even as especially funny. The obstruction standing between us and the hero's face has a Kabuki-like effect, reducing him to a series of gestures plus whatever props and setting happen to be around. We quickly learn that not only do ghosts perceive time differently than we do—as in, barely at all: a day to us might feel like a second to one of them—they seem to have unfettered access to time. And they can communicate with other ghosts seemingly through telepathy (though their conversations are indicated in subtitles). It sounds like I'm making up every single detail of this exceptionally odd film, and that's a big part of what makes it so special: the sense that one of the oldest stories in the world has been stripped down to its essence and imagined all over again. The peculiar script combines with Lowery's earnest deadpan direction, thoughtful framing, and aggressively unnerving use of sound and music to create the very inexpensive indie-movie equivalent of a visionary spectacle. The result belongs on a short list, along with "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Koyaanisqatsi," of movies that change the way you see everything. (Matt Zoller Seitz)

7. “A Ghost Story”

In his W Magazine interview, the great Daniel Day-Lewis quips, “There is nothing more beautiful in all the arts than something that appears simple.” And if we take DDL’s definition of beauty as sacrosanct (because why wouldn’t we?) then it’s not hard to argue that writer-director David Lowery has created the most beautiful art piece of the year. “A Ghost Story” [our review] hovers over familiar thematic ground – love, loss, moving on – but the story’s apparent simplicity is like the film’s primary image; a white bedsheet. What lies underneath is a tiny, star-studded, cosmos of emotional transcendence, turning the film into a hushed whisper with the power to move mountains. Embracing the microscopically somber acting tones of his two “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, Lowery shows how a deep love dissolves into the ether after a tragedy; through the original, at-times whimsical, POV of Affleck’s ghost. Andrew Droz Palermo’s cozy cinematography wraps the entire piece in blanket-warm glows and sleight dances of mesmeric light, and Daniel Hart’s nostalgic compositions are so integral to the experience that the film morphs into a symphony on more than one occasion, deepening its enduring qualities forevermore. Taking inspirational cues from a melange of films gone by, with traces of “Spirited Away,” “Under the Skin,” “Poltergeist” and “Jeanne Dielman,” Lowery has created an ethereal tale bursting with enchanted mystery without an ounce of treacle. — Nikola Grozdanovic