A Ghost Story (2017)

3. Daniel Hart – A Ghost Story    How can a movie so light on actual plot break your heart? To say that David Lowery’s low-budget supernatural drama features a bare-bones narrative would be an understatement, but it somehow manages to offer up poignant and engrossing ruminations about loss regardless.

There are long stretches of time where not a single line of dialogue is spoken, so how is the audience supposed to pick up on the more prominent themes? Lowery tells his story not through lengthy conversations but through a combination of strong imagery and powerful music composed by Daniel Hart

Although the notorious pie scene lacks a single second of music, every other scene that’s light on dialogue benefits from Hart’s melancholy cues. The Secret in the Wall, for example, conveys the protagonist’s grief in a way that dialogue simply couldn’t. Paired with the beautiful visuals, Hart’s music is able to tell Lowery’s story in its own special way. There are few films that rely on music as much as this one. The score is so easy to shower with praise because the cues are an integral part of the storytelling process.

It’s so prominent that it’s likely to stick with the viewer long after the credits roll. It’s the type of music that will have people rushing to their computers or phones to hear it again. Even by itself, the music is able to tell a story. That’s the mark of a phenomenal score.

Highlights: Little Notes, Post Pie, The Secret in the Wall

Lowery financed the low-budget film partly with his own money. He reached out directly to Affleck and Mara, bypassing typical channels so that the actors' own agents didn't know they were doing the project until just before it began.
"I'm inherently a secretive person," said Mara. "It's just fun and exciting to do something in secret. And also, there's no pressure, there aren't these weird expectations, it really felt like making something for ourselves.”

Affleck was later unavailable for some reshoots, and so the film's art director David Pink stepped in as a substitute ghost. Lowery said that even he is now unsure who is under the sheet in some specific shots.
"I was under it for some of the time, but some of the time I wasn't," Affleck said.

Perhaps speaking to the intense closeness of the collaboration between the actors and filmmaker, Mara also recalled that during one take of a shot in which she and Affleck cuddled in bed, she actually fell asleep.