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A GHOST STORY – Review – We Are Movie Geeks

Review

A GHOST STORY – Review

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There is a long unedited sequence 30 minutes into A GHOST STORY where a ghost, wearing a white bedsheet with two eye-holes cut out like Charlie Brown with the Great Pumpkin, is observing his sobbing widow.  She sits on the kitchen floor and eats a pie. That entire pie, bite by bite, is devoured in a scene that goes on a good five minutes. I think this is where uninformed moviegoers who may have wandered into  A GHOST STORY expecting a conventional haunted house thriller will have their patience stretched to the breaking point. A GHOST STORY is an arty meditation on love and loss, glacial in pace, and on the surface not much happens in it. It’s not for all tastes, but for adventurous film fans it is rewarding, one of those strange movies that promises to stay with you long after the end credits have rolled.

Casey Affleck stars in A GHOST STORY  as ‘C’, a mopey musician who resides in a dilapidated house on the suburban edge of an unspecified city with his wife, ‘M’ (Rooney Mara). Something’s not quite right with the house. There are sudden loud noises, and mysterious lights flicker on the walls. After C is killed in a car wreck in front of their home, he rises from the slab at the morgue and returns to silently observe M as she at first grieves, then eventually moves out of their house and on with her life. But C must stay behind, a quiet observer to the comings and goings of all the home’s subsequent tenants, his fate to endure the passage of time as the world moves on around him. A Spanish-speaking single mom comes and goes as well as a group of young hipsters. The ghost is able to tamper with electricity and move objects, but mostly he just stands around, occasionally communicating with (via subtitles) another ghost in the house next door.

Many questions that arise from A GHOST STORY oblique approach, but that’s what makes it an intelligent alternative to the noisy cinematic marketplace. There are answers in Director David Lowery’s script, which does tell a story. A mystery is solved, and the plot moves satisfactorily from beginning to middle to an emotional ending. A GHOST STORY is nearly wordless with most of the film’s dialog comes from one drunk blowhard party guest (Will Oldham – billed as “The Prognosticator”) who goes on and on in a cynical lengthy monologue, though that was the one scene in the film I disliked. The guy was abrasive and unpleasant, his shirt sported gross armpit stains, and I didn’t connect how his speech fit in with the rest of the film. Lowery shot A GHOST STORY in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio which cleverly highlight’s the claustrophobic nature of C’s predicament and it’s all driven by Andrew Droz Palermo’s moody photography and composer Daniel Hart’s haunting, affecting score. While it may divide audiences A GHOST STORY is a thought-provoking, challenging film that I recommend.

4 of 5 Stars

A GHOST STORY opens in St. Louis Friday, July 28th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater